The psychology of peoples

A. P. Lange

Education

|L

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES

THE PSYCHOLOGY
OF PEOPLES

By Gustave Le Bon

Author of "The

Crowd "

NEW YORK
THE MACMILLAN CO,

L35

[All rights reserved.]

CONTENTS

BOOK I

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF RACES
CHAPTER I

PAGE

THE SOUL OF RACES . 3-16

How the naturalists classify species Application of their
methods to man Defective side of the classifications of the
human races at present in vogue Foundations of a psycho-
logical description The average types of the races How they
may be established by observation The psychological factors
which determine the average type of a race The influence of
ancestors and that of the immediate parents Common psycho-
logical groundwork possessed by all the individuals of a race
Immense influence of bygone generations on the present
generation Mathematical reasons for this influence How
the collective soul has spread from the family to the village,
from the city to the surrounding district Advantages and
dangers of the conception of the city Circumstances under
which the formation of the collective soul is impossible
Example of Italy How the natural races have given way to
the historic races.

CHAPTER II

THE LIMITS OF THE VARIABILITY OF THE CHA-
RACTER OF RACES 17-24

The variability of the character of races, and not its fixity,
constitutes the apparent rule Reasons for this appearance
Invariability of the fundamental characteristics and variability

vi CONTENTS

PAGE

of the secondary characteristics Analogies between the
psychological characteristics and the irreducible and modifiable
characteristics of the animal species It is only environment,
circumstances, and education that influence the accessory
psychological characteristics The possibilities of character
Examples furnished by the different periods The men of the
Terror What they became at different periods How
national characteristics endure in spite of revolutions Various
examples Conclusion.

CHAPTER III
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL HIERARCHY OF RACES . . 25-38

Psychological classification is based, as are anatomical assi-
fications, on the determination of a small number of irreducible
and fundamental characteristics Psychological classification
of the human races The primitive races The inferior races
The average races The superior races The psychological
elements the grouping of which allows of this classification
The elements which are of the most importance Character
Morality The intellectual qualities are modifiable by educa-
tion The qualities appertaining to character are irreducible
and constitute the unvarying element in each people Their
role in history Why it is impossible for different races to
understand and influence one another The reasons why it is
impossible for an inferior people to adopt a superior civilisation.

CHAPTER IV

THE PROGRESSIVE DIFFERENTIATION OF INDI-
VIDUALS AND RACES 39-49

The inequality between the different individuals of a race is
greater in proportion to the superiority of the race Mental
equality of all the individuals of inferior races To appreciate
the differences that separate races, the superior individuals of
each people and not its average representatives must be com-
pared The progress of civilisation tends towards a greater
and greater differentiation of individuals and races Conse-
quences of this differentiation The psychological reasons
which prevent its becoming too considerable The individuals
of the superior races are highly differentiated as regards their
intelligence, and very slightly so as regards their character
How heredity constantly tends to reduce individual superiorities
to the average type of the race Anatomical observations
confirming the progressive psychological differentiation of
races, individuals, and sexes.

CONTENTS vii

CHAPTER V

PAGE

FORMATION OF THE HISTORICAL RACES . . . 50-60

How historical races are formed Conditions which allow of
different races combining to form a single race Influence
of the number of the individuals involved in the process, of
the dissimilarity of their characters, of the environments, etc.
Results of cross-breeding Causes of the great inferiority of
half-breeds Mobility of the new psychological characteristics
created by cross-breeding How these characteristics come to
be fixed The critical periods of history Cross-breeding
constitutes an essential factor in the formation of new races,
and at the same time a powerful factor in the dissolution of
civilisations Importance of the regime of castes Influence
of environment Environment can only exert its influence on
new races in process of formation, and on races whose
ancestral characteristics are giving way before the action of
cross-breeding Environment is without influence on old
races Various examples The majority of the historical races
of Europe are still in process of formation Political and
social consequences Why the period of formation of his-
torical races will soon be over.

BOOK II

HO IV THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF
RACES ARE DISPLAYED IN THE VARIOUS ELE-
MENTS OF THEIR CIVILISATIONS

CHAPTER I

THE VARIOUS ELEMENTS OF A CIVILISATION CON-
SIDERED AS AN EXTERIOR MANIFESTATION
OF THE SOUL OF A PEOPLE .... 63-80

The elements of which a civilisation is composed are the
exterior manifestations of the soul of the peoples which have
created them The importance of these various elements
varies with the different peoples According to the several
peoples it is the arts, literature, institutions, etc., that fill the
fundamental role Examples from antiquity : the Egyptians,
Greeks, and Romans The evolution of the different elements
of a civilisation may be independent of the general march of
that civilisation Examples supplied by the arts What they

viii CONTENTS

PAGE

express Impossibility of finding in a single element of a
civilisation the measure of the level of that civilisation
Elements which assure the superiority of a people Elements
which philosophically are very inferior may be socially very
superior.

CHAPTER II

How INSTITUTIONS, RELIGIONS, AND LANGUAGES

ARE TRANSFORMED . . . . .81-99

The superior races are as powerless as the inferior races to
transform suddenly the elements of their civilisation Contra-
dictions presented by the peoples which have changed their
religions, languages, and arts The example of Japan In
what respect these changes are only apparent The profound
transformations undergone by Buddhism, Brahmanism, Ma-
hometanism and Christianity according to the various races
by which they have been adopted The variations undergone
by institutions and languages according to the race that adopts
them That the words which in different languages are con-
sidered to correspond represent very dissimilar ideas and
modes of thought Impossibility for this reason of translating
certain languages Why, in books of history, the civilisation
of a people sometimes seems to have undergone profound
changes Limits of the reciprocal influence of different
civilisations.

CHAPTER III
How THE ARTS ARE TRANSFORMED . . . 100-126

Application of the principles already set forth to the study of
the evolution of the arts among the Oriental peoples Egypt
The religious ideas from which its arts are derived De-
velopments that await its arts when they are transplanted
amid different races : Ethiopians, Greeks, and Persians
Primitive inferiority of Grecian art Slowness of its evolution
Adoption and evolution in Persia of Grecian art, Egyptian art,
and Assyrian art The transformations undergone by the arts
depend on the race and not on religious beliefs Examples
supplied by the great transformations undergone by Arabian
art according to the races which have adopted Islamism
Application of our principles to the investigation of the origin
and evolution of the arts in India India and Greece went to
the same sources, but in consequence of the diversity of the
races they developed arts having no relationship Immense
transformations undergone by architecture in India among the
different races in spite of the similarity of their beliefs.

CONTENTS ix

PAGE

BOOK III

THE HISTORY OF PEOPLES CONSIDERED AS A
CONSEQUENCE OF THEIR CHARACTER

CHAPTER I

How THE SOUL OF PEOPLES is RESPONSIBLE FOR

THEIR INSTITUTIONS 129-137

The history of a people is always determined by its mental
constitution Various examples How the political institutions
of France are the outcome of the soul of the race Their real
invariability beneath their apparent variability Our most
different political parties pursue identical political ends under
different names Their ideal is always centralisation and the
destruction of individual initiative to the profit of the State
How the French Revolution merely executed the programme
of the old monarchy Contrast between the ideal of the Anglo-
Saxon race and the Latin ideal The initiative of the citizen
substituted for the initiative of the State Peoples' institutions
are always the outcome of their character.

CHAPTER II

APPLICATION OF PRECEDING PRINCIPLES TO THE
COMPARATIVE STUDY OF THE EVOLUTION
OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND
OF THE SPANISH-AMERICAN REPUBLICS . 138-152

The English character How the American soul has been
formed Severity of the selection resulting from the conditions
of existence Forced disappearance of the inferior elements
The negroes and the Chinese Reasons of the prosperity of
the United States and of the decadence of the Spanish-
American republics in spite of identical political institutions
Inevitable anarchy of the Spanish-American republics as a
consequence of the inferiority of the characteristics of the race.

CHAPTER III

How THE MODIFICATION OF THE SOUL OF RACES
AFFECTS THE HISTORICAL EVOLUTION OF
PEOPLES 153-164

The influence of foreign elements at once transforms the soul
of a race, and in consequence its civilisation Example of the
Romans Roman civilisation was not destroyed by military

CONTENTS

p

invasions, but by the pacific invasions of the Barbarians The
Barbarians never formed the project of destroying the Empire
Their invasions were not of the nature of conquests The
early Frank chiefs always considered themselves to be
functionaries of the Roman Empire They always respected
Roman civilisation, and their aim was to continue it It was
only from the seventh century onwards that the Gallic barbarian
chiefs ceased to consider the Emperor as their superior The
complete transformation of Roman civilisation was not the
consequence of a work of destruction, but of the adoption of
an ancient civilisation by a new race The modern invasions
of the United States The civil strife and the breaking up of
the United States into independent and rival States to which
these invasions will lead The invasion of France by
foreigners and their consequences.

BOOK IV

HOW THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF
RACES ARE MODIFIED.

CHAPTER I
THE ROLE OF IDEAS IN THE LIFE OF PEOPLES . 167-189

The leading ideas of each civilisation are always very few in
number Extreme slowness of their birth and disappearance
Ideas do not influence conduct until they have been trans-
formed into sentiments They then form part of the character
It is thanks to the slowness of the evolution of ideas that
civilisations possess a certain fixity How ideas take root
The reason has no influence whatever The influence of
affirmation and prestige The role of enthusiasts and apostles
Deformation undergone by ideas as they penetrate the
masses A universally admitted idea soon influences all the
elements of civilisation It is thanks to their community of
ideas that the men of each age have a sum total of average
conceptions which makes them very much alike in their
thoughts and actions The yoke of custom and opinion It is
not relaxed until the critical ages of history when the old
ideas are losing their influence and have not as yet been
replaced This critical age is the only age in which the dis-
cussion of opinions can be tolerated Dogmas only hold their
own on the condition that they are not discussed Peoples
cannot change their ideas and dogmas without being at once
obliged to change their civilisation.

CONTENTS xi

CHAPTER II

PAGE

THE ROLE OF RELIGIOUS BELIEFS IN THE EVOLU-
TION OF CIVILISATIONS 190-198

Preponderating influence of religious ideas They have always
constituted the most important element of the life of peoples
Religious ideas responsible for the majority of historical events
and social and political institutions A new civilisation
always comes into existence with a new religious idea Power
of the religious ideal Its influence on character It directs
all the faculties towards the same end The political, artistic,
and literary history of peoples is the offspring of their beliefs
The slightest change in the state of a people's belief results in
an entire series of transformations in its existence Various
examples.

CHAPTER III

THE ROLE OF GREAT MEN IN THE HISTORY OF

PEOPLES 199-208

The great advances made by each civilisation have always
been realised by a small elite of superior minds Nature of
their role They synthesise all the efforts of a race Examples
supplied by great discoveries Political role of great men
They embody the dominant ideal of their race Influence of
the great hallucinated Inventors of genius transform a
civilisation The fanatics and the hallucinated make history.

BOOK V

THE DISSOCIATION OF THE CHARACTER OF RACES
AND THEIR DECADENCE

CHAPTER I
How CIVILISATIONS FADE AWAY AND DIE OUT . 211-229

Dissolution of psychological species How hereditary dis-
positions which had required centuries for their formation
may be rapidly lost A very long time is always necessary for
a people to raise itself to a high level of civilisation, and in
some cases a very short time for it to descend therefrom The
principal factor in the decadence of a people is the lowering of
its character The mechanism of the dissolution of civilisations

xii CONTENTS

PAGE

has hitherto been the same for all peoples Symptoms of
decadence presented by some Latin peoples Development of
egoism Diminution of initiative and will power Lowering
of character and morality The youth of the present day
Probable influence of Socialism Its dangers and its strength
How it will cause the civilisations that undergo it to return
to wholly barbarous forms of evolution The peoples among
whom it will be able to triumph.

CHAPTER II
GENERAL CONCLUSIONS . ... . . 230-236

INTRODUCTION

MODERN IDEAS ON SOCIAL EQUALITY AND THE
PSYCHOLOGICAL BASIS OF HISTORY

Origin and development of the idea of equality The consequences it
has had The price already paid for its application Its influence
at the present day on the masses The problems examined in the
present work An inquiry into the principal factors of the general
evolution of peoples Is this evolution determined by institutions ?
The elements of each civilisation : institutions, arts, creeds, etc. ,
and whether they have not certain psychological foundations
peculiar to each people ? The element of chance in history and
its permanent laws.

f^HE civilisation of a people is based on a small
* number of fundamental ideas, which determine
its institutions, its literature and its arts. These ideas
come very slowly into being, and they are also very
slow to disappear. Long after their erroneous nature
has become clear to cultivated minds, they remain
indisputable truths for the masses, and continue to
exert their influence on the rank and file of a nation.
It is difficult to obtain recognition for a new idea,
but it is no less difficult to discredit an idea that has

xiii

xiv INTRODUCTION

long been generally accepted. Humanity has always
been exceedingly loth to abandon its decayed ideas
and its moribund gods.

It is barely a century and a half ago that certain
philosophers, who, it should be remarked, were very
ignorant of the primitive history of man, of the varia-
tions of his mental constitution and of the laws of
heredity, propounded the idea of the equality of
individuals and races.

This idea, which would naturally be most attractive
to the masses, ended by firmly implanting itself in
their mind, and speedily bore fruit. It has shaken
the foundation of the old societies, given birth to
the most formidable of revolutions, and thrown the
Western world into a series of convulsions, the end
of which it is impossible to foresee.

Doubtless certain of the inequalities among indi-
viduals and races were too apparent to be seriously
disputed ; but people found it easy to persuade them-
selves that these inequalities were merely the outcome
of differences of education, that all men are born
equally intelligent and good, and that the sole respon-
sibility for their perversion lies with the institutions
they live under. This being the case the remedy was
simple in the extreme : all that had to be done was

INTRODUCTION xv

to reform the institutions and to give every man an
identical education. It is in this way that institutions
and education have ended by becoming the great
panaceas of modern democrats, the means of reme-
dying inequalities which clash with the immortal
principles that are the only divinities that survive
to-day.

And yet science, as it has progressed, has proved
the vanity of the theories of equality and shown that
the mental gulf created by the past between indi-
viduals and races can only be filled up by the slowly
accumulating action of heredity. Modern psychology,
together with the stern lessons of experience, has
demonstrated that the institutions and the education
which suit some individuals and some races are most
harmful to others. But when ideas are once in circu-
lation it is not in the power of philosophers to destroy
them when they arrive at the conviction that they are
erroneous. Like a swollen stream that has overflown
its banks, the idea continues its destructive progress
with which nothing can interfere.

There is no psychologist, no traveller, no fairly
intelligent statesman who is not aware how erroneous
is this chimerical notion of the equality of men,
which has thrown the world into confusion, brought

xvi INTRODUCTION

about in Europe a gigantic revolution, involved
America in the sanguinary War of Succession, and
landed all the French colonies in a state of lamentable
decadence ; yet in spite of this knowledge they are
few indeed who venture to combat this notion.

Moreover the idea of equality, far from being on
the decline, continues to make headway. It is in the
name of this idea that socialism, which seems destined
to enslave before long the majority of Western peo-
ples, pretends to ensure their welfare. It is in its
name that the modern woman, forgetting the deep-
lying mental differences that separate her from man,
claims the same rights and the same education as man,
and will end, if she be triumphant, in making of the
European a nomad without a home or a family.

The masses scarcely trouble themselves about the
political and social upheavals to which these levelling
principles have given rise or about the far graver
events they have yet to bring forth, and the states-
men of the present day are in power too short a time
for them to be more heedful. Moreover public
opinion has become the sovereign authority, and it
would be impossible not to bow to it.

The only real measure of the social importance of
an idea is the influence it exerts on men's minds.

INTRODUCTION xvii

The degree of truth or error it contains is only of
interest from a philosophic point of view. When an
idea has come to be a sentiment with the masses, all
the consequences it involves must be undergone in
succession.

We see then that it is by means of education and
institutions that the modern dream of equality en-
deavours to seek realisation. It is in their name that,
reforming the unjust laws of nature, we attempt to
cast in the same mould the intelligences of the
negroes of the Martinique, of the Guadeloupe and
of the Senegal, those of the Arabs of Algeria and
finally those of the Asiatics. The chimera is doubt-
less quite unrealisable, but experience alone can show
the danger of chimeras. Reason is incapable of
transforming men's convictions.

The object of this work is to describe the psycho-
logical characteristics which constitute the soul of
races, and to show how the history of a people and
its civilisation are determined by these characteristics.
Neglecting details, or only considering them so far as
they are indispensable to the proof of the principles
advanced, we shall examine the formation and mental

constitution of the historic races, that is of the races

i*

xviii INTRODUCTION

>

jff artificially formed in historic times by the chances of

conquest, immigration and political changes, and we
shall endeavour to demonstrate that their history is
determined by their mental constitution. We shall
'- note the degree of fixity or variability of the charac-
teristics of races. We shall try to find out whether
individuals and peoples tend towards equality or, on
the contrary, towards greater and greater differen-
tiation. We shall then examine whether the elements
composing a civilisation, its arts, its institutions, its
beliefs, are not direct manifestations of the soul of

races, and whether in consequence it is not impossible
v

that they should pass from one people to another.

We shall conclude by attempting to determine what
are the necessities under the influence of which
civilisations decay and die out. We have dealt at
length with the problems in question in various works
on the civilisations of the East. This short volume
should be regarded as a brief synthesis.

The point that has remained most clearly fixed in
my mind, after long journeys through the most varied
countries, is that each people possesses a mental
constitution as unaltering as its anatomical charac-
teristics, a constitution which is the source of its
sentiments, thoughts, institutions, beliefs and arts.

INTRODUCTION xix

Tocqueville and other illustrious thinkers have ima-
gined that they have discovered in the institutions of
the various peoples the cause of their evolution. I,
on the contrary, am persuaded and hope to prove,
while choosing my examples from the countries
studied by Tocqueville, that institutions are of ex-
tremely slight importance as regards the evolution of
civilisation. They are most often effects and but
very rarely causes.

The history of peoples is determined, no doubt, by
very different factors. It is full of particular cases,
of accidents which have taken place but which might
not have taken place. Side by side, however, with
these chances, with these accidental circumstances,
there are great permanent laws which govern the
general course of each civilisation. The mental con-
stitution of races proceeds from the most general, the
most primordial of these permanent laws. The life
of a people, its institutions, beliefs, and arts are but
the visible expression of its invisible soul. For a
people to transform its institutions, beliefs, and arts it
must first transform its soul ; to enable it to bequeath
its civilisation to another people, it would be neces-
sary that it should be able to bequeath its soul.
Doubtless this is not what history teaches, but we

xx INTRODUCTION

shall easily show that in recording contrary assertions
it has allowed itself to be misled by vain appearances.

The reformers who have followed one another for
a century past have endeavoured to change every-
thing : Gods, the earth and men ; but their efforts
have been wholly unavailing so far as regards the
century-old characteristics of the souls of races which
time has established.

The conception of the irreducible differences which
separate human beings is entirely contrary to the
ideas of modern socialists, but it is not the teachings
of science that could induce the apostles of a new
dogma to renounce their illusory doctrines. Their
efforts are a new phase of the eternal crusade of
humanity in quest of happiness, that treasure of
Hesperides for which the peoples have been searching
from the dawn of history onwards. The dream of
equality would perhaps avail as much as the old
illusions which cradled us in the past, were it not that
it is destined to be shattered at an early date on the
immovable rock of natural inequalities. Together
with old age and death, these inequalities are a part of
those apparent iniquities of which nature is full arid
to which man must submit.

BOOK I

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CHARACTERISTICS
OF RACES

BOOK I

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF
RACES

CHAPTER I

THE SOUL OF RACES

I low the naturalists classify species Application of their methods to
man Defective side of the classifications of the human races at
present in vogue Foundations of a psychological description
The average types of the races How they may be established by
observation The psychological factors which determine the aver-
age type of a race The influence of ancestors and that of the
immediate parents Common psychological groundwork possessed
by all the individuals of a race Immense influence of bygone
generations on the present generation Mathematical reasons for
this influence How the collective soul has spread from the family
to the village, from the city to the surrounding district Advantages
and dangers of the conception of the city Circumstances under
which the formation of the collective soul is impossible Example
of Italy How the natural races have given way to the historic
races.

TV T ATURALISTS base the classification of species

* ^ on the observation of certain anatomical

characteristics regularly and constantly reproduced

: TtfEj.PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES:

by heredity. We are aware to-day that these charac-
teristics are transformed by the hereditary accumula-
tion of imperceptible changes. Still, if attention be
confined to the comparatively short period covered
by history, the species may be said to be invariable.

Applied to man, the methods of classification of
the naturalists have allowed of the determining of a
certain number of perfectly distinct types. By the
aid of clearly defined anatomical characteristics, such
as the colour of the skin, and the shape and volume
of the skull, it has been possible to establish that the
human race comprises several species which are quite
distinct and probably of very different origin. In the
eyes of the scientific men who are respectful of religious
traditions, these species are simply races. However,
as has been rightly observed, " if the Negro and the
Caucasian were snails, all zoologists would affirm
unanimously that they constitute excellent species,
which could never have descended from the same
couple from which they had gradually come to
differ."

These anatomical characteristics, those at least of
them that can be traced by our analysis, only allow
of very summary general divisions. Their divergencies
are only perceptible in the case of the most distinct

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 5

human species ; of the white and yellow races, or the
negroes for example. Peoples, however, that closely
resemble one another as regards their physique, may
be widely different as regards their modes of feeling
and acting, and in consequence as regards their
civilisations, beliefs, and arts. Is it possible, for in-
stance, to class in one and the same group a Spaniard,
an Englishman, and an Arab? Are not the mental
differences that exist between them apparent to
everybody, and to be detected throughout their
history ?

In the absence of anatomical characteristics, it has
been proposed to base the classification of certain
peoples on various elements, such as language, belief,
and political organisation ; but this mode of classifica-
tion will scarcely bear examination.

The elements of classification which anatomy,
languages, environment, or political organisation are
incapable of furnishing are supplied by psychology,
which shows that behind the institutions, arts, beliefs,
and political upheavals of each people, lie certain
moral and intellectual characteristics that determine
its evolution. It is the whole of these characteristics
that form what may be called the soul of a race.

Each race possesses a mental constitution as un-

6 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES:

varying as its anatomical constitution. There seems to
be no doubt that the former corresponds to a certain
special structure of the brain, but as science is not
sufficiently advanced as yet to acquaint us with this
structure, we cannot have recourse to it as a basis of
classification. Moreover, a knowledge of it would in
no way modify the description of the mental con-
stitution of which it is the determining factor and
which is revealed to us by observation.

The moral and intellectual characteristics, whose
association forms the soul of a people, represent the
synthesis of its entire past, the inheritance of all its
ancestors, the motives of its conduct. They appear
to be very variable in individuals of the same race,
but observation proves that the majority of the indi-
viduals of a given race always possess a certain
number of common psychological characteristics,
which are as stable as the anatomical characteristics
that allow of the classification of species, while, like
these latter characteristics, the psychological character-
istics are regularly and constantly reproduced by
heredity.

This aggregate of psychological elements observable
jti all the individuals of a race constitutes what may
r igj>tly be called the national character. Together

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION ^

they form the average type which permits of a people
being defined. A thousand Frenchmen, Englishmen,
or Chinamen, chosen at hazard, offer notable differ-
ences amongst themselves, but nevertheless, owing to
racial heredity, they possess common characteristics
which allow of the determining of an ideal type of
the Frenchman, the Englishman, and the Chinaman
analogous to the ideal type which the naturalist pre-
sents when he describes in a general manner the dog
or the horse. Applicable to the different varieties of
dogs or horses, such a description can only include
the characteristics common to them all and not those
which enable their numerous individual specimens to
be distinguished.

Provided a race be sufficiently ancient, and in con-
sequence homogeneous, its average type is established
with sufficient clearness for it to be readily noted by
the observer.

When we visit a foreign people the only charac-
teristics that can arrest our attention are precisely
those that are common to all the inhabitants of the
country we are travelling through, since they are the
only characteristics that are constantly repeated. The
individual characteristics, being seldom repeated,
escape us, and before long we not only distinguish

8 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES:

at first sight between an Englishman, an Italian, or
a Spaniard, but we are perfectly able to ascribe to
them certain moral and intellectual characteristics,
which are the very fundamental characteristics that
we referred to above. An Englishman or a Gascon,
an inhabitant of Normandy or Flanders, corresponds
to a type of which we have a perfectly clear idea and
of which we can easily give a description. Applied
to an isolated individual, the description may seem
very inadequate and sometimes inexact ; applied to
the majority of the individuals of one of these races
it will depict them perfectly. The unconscious pro-
cess by which we arrive at an idea of the physical
and mental type of a people is absolutely identical
in its essence with the method by which a naturalist
classifies species.

This identity of the mental constitution of the
majority of the individuals of a race is due to very
simple physiological reasons. Each individual is the
product not merely of his immediate parents but also
of his race, that is of the entire series of his ascend-
ants. A learned economist, M. Cheysson, has calcu-
lated that in France, supposing there to be three
generations in a century, each of us would have in
his veins the blood of at least twenty millions of the

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 9

people living in the year 1000. " In consequence all
the inhabitants of a given locality, of a given district,
necessarily possess common ancestors, are moulded
of the same clay, bear the same impress, and they
are all brought back unceasingly to the average type
by this long and heavy chain, of which they are
merely the last links. We are the children at once
of our parents and our race. Our country is our
second mother for physiological and hereditary as
well as sentimental reasons."

If it be wished to state in precise language the in-
fluences which govern the individual and direct his
conduct, they may be said to be of three kinds. The
first and certainly the most important is the influence
of ancestors ; the second, the influence of the imme-
diate parents ; the third, commonly supposed to be
the most powerful, but nevertheless the weakest, is >
the influence of environment. The influence of en-
vironment, including in its scope the various physical
and moral influences to which the individual is sub-
jected during his life, and particularly during his r
education, produces but very slight variations. The
influences of environment only become really effective
when heredity has caused their action to be continued
in the same direction during a long period.

io THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES :

Do what he may, then, the individual is always and
above all the representative of his race. The totality
of the ideas and sentiments that are, as it were, the
birthright of all the individuals of a given country
form the soul of the race. Invisible in its essence,
this soul is very visible in its effects, since it de-
termines in reality the entire evolution of a
people.

A race may be compared to the totality of the cells
that constitute a living being. The existence of these
milliards of cells is very short, whereas the existence
of the being formed by their union is relatively very
long ; they possess at once their own personal life
and a collective life, that of the being of which they
form the substance. In the same way each individual
of a race has a very short individual life and a very
long collective life. This latter life is that of the race
of which he is sprung, which he helps to perpetuate,
and on which he is always dependent.

A race is to be regarded as a permanent being that
is independent of time. This permanent being is
composed of the long succession of the dead who
were its ancestors, as well as of the living individuals
who constitute it at a given moment. To understand
the true signification of a race, it must be considered

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION n

with regard both to its past and its future. The dead,
besides being infinitely more numerous than the
living, are infinitely more powerful. They reign over
the vast domain of the unconscious, that invisible
domain which exerts its sway over all the manifesta-
tions of the intelligence and of character. A people
is guided far more by its dead than by its living
members. It is by its dead, and by its dead alone,
that a race is founded. Century after century our
departed ancestors have fashioned our ideas and
sentiments, and in consequence all the motives of our
conduct. The generations that have passed away do
not bequeath us their physical constitution merely;
they also bequeath us their thoughts. The dead are
the only undisputed masters of the living. We bear
the burden of their mistakes, we reap the reward of
their virtues.

The formation of the mental constitution of a people
does not demand, as does the creation of animal
species, those geological periods whose immense
duration defies calculation. Still, the time it demands
is considerable. To create in such a people as the
French, even to the comparatively slight extent
accomplished as yet, the community of sentiments
and thought that forms its soul, more than ten cen-

12 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES:

turies have been necessary. 1 Perhaps the most
important result of the French Revolution was to
hasten this formation by greatly promoting the
breaking up of the minor nationalities : Picards,
Flemish, Burgundians, Gascons, Bretons, men of
Provence, &c., into which France was formerly
divided. Doubtless the unification is far from being
complete, and it is more especially because we are
composed of too varied races, and in consequence
have too different ideas and sentiments, that we are
the victims of dissensions unknown to more homo-
geneous peoples to the English, for example. In

1 This lapse of time, long as it may seem from the point of view of
history, is in reality comparatively short, since it only represents thirty
generations. The reason why so relatively brief an interval is sufficient
to fix certain characteristics is that when a cause acts for some length or
time in the same direction, it speedily produces very considerable effects.
Mathematics teach us that when a cause persistently produces the same
effect, the causes increase in arithmetical progression (i, 2, 3, 4, 5, &c. ),
and the effects in geometrical progession (2, 4, 8, 16, 32, &c.). The
causes are the logarithms of the effects. In the famous problem of the
doubling of the grains of wheat on the squares of a chessboard, the
successive numbers of the square are the logarithms of the number of
grains of wheat. Similarly in the case of money invested at compound
interest, the number of years is the logarithm of the accumulated capital.
It is for reasons of this order that the majority of social phenomena
may be expressed by very nearly similar geometrical curves. In another
work I arrived at the conclusion that these curves might be expressed
analytically by the equation of the parabola or the hyperbola. My
learned friend, M. Cheysson, is of opinion that they are better repre-
sented, as a rule, by an exponential equation.

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 13

England, the Saxon, the Norman, and the Ancient
Briton have ended by forming, as the result of fusion,
a very homogeneous type, and everything in conse-
quence is homogeneous in the domain of conduct.
Thanks to this fusion, the English have acquired in
a high degree the three fundamental bases of the soul
of a people : common sentiments, common interests,
and common beliefs. When a nation has reached
this stage, there is an instinctive agreement amongst
all its members on all great questions, and it ceases
to be a prey to serious dissensions.

This community of sentiments, ideas, beliefs, and
interests, created by slow, hereditary accumulations,
gives a high degree of identity and fixity to the
mental constitution of a people. It was the cause
of the greatness of Rome in ancient times, and
at the present day it is the source of the greatness
of England. The moment it disappears, peoples
begin to break up, The role of Rome was at an
end when it ceased to possess it.

The congeries of sentiments, ideas, traditions, and
beliefs which form the soul of a collectivity of men
has always existed more or less in the case of all
peoples and at all ages, but its progressive extension
has been slowly accomplished. Restricted at first

T 4 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES:

to the family and gradually extended to the village,
the city, and the province, the collective soul has only
spread to all the inhabitants of a country in com-
paratively modern times. It was only when this last
result had been achieved, that the notion of a native
country, as we understand it to-day, came into exist-
ence. The notion is not possible until the national
soul is formed. The Greeks never got beyond the
notion of the city, and their cities were always at
war, because in point of fact they were always very
foreign to one another. For two thousand years
past India has known no other unity than the
village, and it is for this reason that for two thousand
years the country has always been subject to foreign
rulers, whose ephemeral empires have come to an
end as easily as they were formed.

Weak though it be from the point of view of
military strength, the conception of the city as the
sole native country has, on the contrary, always been
very effective from the point of view of the develop-
ment of civilisation. Though less spacious than the
soul of the native country, the soul of the city has
at times been more fruitful. Athens in ancient times,
Florence and Venice during the Middle Ages, show
us the degree of civilisation which may be attained
to by small agglomerations of men.

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 15

When small cities or small provinces have lived an
independent life for a considerable length of time,
they end by possessing so stable a soul that its
fusion with those of neighbouring cities and pro-
vinces, with a view to the formation of a national
soul, becomes almost impossible. Such a fusion,
even if it be capable of being brought about, as
happens when the elements brought together are not
too dissimilar, is never the work of a day, but only
that of centuries. To achieve such a work, a Riche-
lieu or a Bismarck is necessary, but they only bring
it to a head, when it has been long in elaboration.
It is possible indeed for a country, as has happened
in the case of Italy, to arrive suddenly, as the result
of exceptional circumstances, at forming a single
State, but it would be a mistake to suppose that
it thus acquires simultaneously a national soul. It
is clear to me that in Italy there are Piedmontese,
Sicilians, Venetians, Romans, etc., but it is not clear
as yet that there are Italians.

At the present day, whatever be the race under
consideration, whether it be homogeneous or not, by
the mere fact that it is civilised and for a long while
past has played its part in history, it must always be
regarded as an artificial and not as a natural race.

16 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES

Natural races are scarcely to be met with except
among savages. It is only among savages that it
is possible to find peoples of absolute racial purity.
At the present day the majority of civilised races
are merely historical races.

We are not concerned here with the origin of races.
That they have been formed by nature or by history
is beyond our purpose. What interests us is their
characteristics such as they have been constituted
by a long past. Kept up during centuries by the
same conditions of existence and accumulated by
heredity, these characteristics have ended by ac-
quiring a high degree of fixity and by determining
the type of each people.

CHAPTER II

THE LIMITS OF THE VARIABILITY OF THE
CHARACTER OF RACES

The variability of the character of races, and not its fixity, constitutes
the apparent rule Reasons for this appearance Invariability of
the fundamental characteristics and variability of the secondary
characteristics Analogies between the psychological characteristics
and the irreducible and modifiable characteristics of the animal
species It is only environment, circumstances, and education that
influence the accessory psychological characteristics The possi-
bilities of character Examples furnished by the different periods
The men of the Terror What they became at different periods
How national characteristics endure in spite of revolutions
Various examples Conclusion.

IT is only by a careful study of the evolution
of civilisations that the fixity of the mental con-
stitution of races is brought home to the observer.
At first sight it is variability and not fixity that
appears to be the general rule. The history of
peoples might induce the belief that their soul under-
goes on occasion very rapid and very far-reaching
transformations. Does there not seem, for example,

3 '7

i8 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES:

to be a very considerable difference between the
character of an Englishman of the time of Cromwell
and that of a modern Englishman ? Does not the
circumspect and subtle Italian of the present day
seem a very different being from the fierce and
impulsive Italian described in the Memoirs of Ben-
venuto Cellini? Not to go so far afield, and to
confine ourselves to France, how numerous are the
apparent changes of character in the course of a
few centuries, and even at times in the course of
a few years ! What historian has not remarked the
difference between the French national character of
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries ? and in
modern times, can anything seem more distinct than
the character of the ferocious Conventionalists and
that of the docile slaves of Napoleon ? And yet
they were the same men, though in the space of
a few years they seem to have changed entirely.
To elucidate the causes of these changes, we will
remind the student in the first place that a psycho-
logical species is formed, as is an anatomical species,
of a very small number of irreducible, fundamental
characteristics around which are grouped accessory
characteristics which are modifiable and changeable.
The breeder who transforms the apparent structure

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 19

of an animal, or the gardener who modifies the aspect
of a plant to such a degree that it is unrecognisable
to the unpractised eye, has not affected to the
slightest extent the fundamental characteristics of
the species ; all they have done has been to influence
the accessory characteristics. In spite of all the
artifices employed, the fundamental characteristics
always tend to reappear with each new generation.

The mental constitution possesses fundamental
characteristics as immutable as the anatomical
characteristics of animal species, but it also possesses
accessory characteristics that are easily modified.
It is these latter characteristics that may easily be
changed by environment, circumstances, education
and various other factors.

It must also be remembered, and the point is
essential, that we all possess in our mental constitu- /
tion certain possibilities of character, which circum-
stances do not always provide with an opportunity
of manifesting themselves. When they come to the
front, a new and more or less ephemeral personality
at once takes shape. It is in this way that at times
of great political or religious crisis, momentary
changes of character are observed, which would seem
to indicate that manners, ideas, conduct, everything

20 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES:

in short, had undergone a change. Everything has
indeed changed, as happens to the tranquil surface
of a lake lashed by a storm ; but it is rare that the
change is lasting.

It is in consequence of these possibilities of
character put in operation by certain exceptional
events, that the actors in great religious and political
crises appear to us to be made of superior stuff to
ourselves, to be a sort of giants of whom we are the
degenerate sons. In reality they were men like our-
selves, in whom circumstances had given free rein
to possibilities of character possessed by all of us.
Take, for example, the " giants of the Convention "
who held Europe in check, and sent their adversaries
to the guillotine for a mere contradiction. At bottom
they were respectable, pacific citizens like ourselves,
who in ordinary times would probably have led
the most tranquil and retired existence in their
studies or behind their counters. Extraordinary
events caused the vibration of certain of their brain
cells which under usual conditions would not have
been called into activity, and they developed into
those colossal figures, whom posterity is at a loss
to understand. Born a hundred years later, Robes-
pierre would doubtless have been an upright magis-

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 21

trate on excellent terms with the local priest ;
Fouquier-Tinville a magistrate possessing, perhaps
in rather a higher degree than his colleagues, the
harshness and supercilious manners of his profession,
but greatly appreciated for his zeal in bringing
delinquents to book ; Saint-Just would have made
an excellent schoolmaster, esteemed by his chiefs
and very proud of the decoration he would certainly
have ended by obtaining. To remove all doubt as
to the accuracy of these previsions it is sufficient
to note what Napoleon accomplished with such of
the ferocious Terrorists as had not the time to cut
off mutually each others' heads. The majority of
them became staid officials, tax collectors, magistrates
or prefects. The waves stirred up by the storm of
which we spoke above had calmed down, and the
troubled lake had recovered its tranquil surface.

Even in the most troubled periods, in those which
produce the strangest variations of personality, it
is easy to trace the fundamental characteristics
of the race beneath the new developments. Was
there much difference in reality between the cen-
tralised, dictatorial and despotic regime of our strict
Jacobins and the centralised, dictatorial and despotic
regime to which fifteen centuries of monarchy had

22 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES:

accustomed the French nation ? All the revolutions
of the Latin peoples result in this obstinately re-
curring regime, in this incurable need of being
governed, because it represents a sort of synthesis
of the instincts of the race. It was not solely the
glamour attaching to his victories that enabled
Bonaparte to make himself master of France. When
he transformed the republic into a dictatorship, the
hereditary instincts of the race manifested themselves
day by day with greater intensity ; indeed, in the
absence of an officer of genius, any adventurer
might have filled his part. Fifty years later the heir
to his name had only to show himself to obtain the
votes of a people tired of liberty and eager for
servitude. It was not the i8th Brumaire that
established the fortunes of Napoleon, but the soul
of his race which he was about to trample beneath
his iron heel. 1

1 "At his first gesture," writes Taine, "the French bowed in
obedience, and they persisted in their attitude, as if it were their
natural condition ; the humble, the soldiers, and the peasants, with
animal fidelity ; the great, the dignitaries and functionaries, with
Byzantine servility. The Republicans offered no resistance ; on the
contrary, it was among them that he found the best instruments of his
reign, his Senators, Deputies, State Councillors, judges and officials
of every rank. Beneath their talk of liberty and equality, he had been
quick to divine their dictatorial instincts, their need of commanding,
of surpassing their fellows, and even, subsidiarily and in addition, their

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 23

The influence exerted on men by environment
appears so great, because it operates on the accessory
and transitory elements, or on those possibilities of
character of which we have been speaking. In
reality, the changes are not very profound. The
mildest man, driven by hunger, attains to a degree
of ferocity which renders him capable of every crime,
and even leads him occasionally to devour his fellow
man. Will it be said on this account that his habitual
character has definitely changed ?

If the conditions of civilisation procure a minority
extreme wealth and develop in its members all the
vices which are the inevitable consequence of luxury ;
if they arouse violent desires in the remainder of the
population without supplying the means of satisfying
them, the result will be general discontent and unrest,
which will influence conduct and provoke upheavals
of every kind, but amid this discontent and these
upheavals the fundamental characteristics of the race
will always show themselves. In the past, the
English-born inhabitants of the United States, when

hungering after wealth and pleasure. Between the delegate of the
Committee of Public Safety and the Minister, the Prefect or the sub-
Prefect of the Empire, the difference is slight. The man is the same
and it is only the costume that is altered : the carmagnole has been
exchanged for an embroidered uniform. "

24 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES

engaged in civil war, displayed the same indomitable
energy as they exhibit to-day in founding towns,
universities, and manufactories. The national charac-
ter has not been modified ; it is merely the objects
that bring it into play that have changed.

When examining in succession the various factors
capable of influencing the mental constitution of
peoples, we always observe that their influence is
exerted on the accessory and transitory sides of
character, while they scarcely affect the fundamental
elements, or only affect them as the result of very
slow hereditary accumulations.

We do not conclude from what precedes that the
psychological characteristics of peoples are invariable,
but only that they possess, like the anatomical
characteristics, a high degree of fixity. It is on
account of this fixity that the soul of races changes
so slowly during the course of ages.

CHAPTER III

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL HIERARCHY OF RACES

Psychological classification is based, as are anatomical classifications,
on the determination of a small number of irreducible and funda-
mental characteristics Psychological classification of the human
races The primitive races The inferior races The average
races The superior races The psychological elements the
grouping of which allows of this classification The elements
which are of the most importance Character Morality The
intellectual qualities are modifiable by education The qualities
appertaining to character are irreducible and constitute the
unvarying element in each people Their role in history Why
it is impossible for different races to understand and influence one
another The reasons why it is impossible for an inferior people
to adopt a superior civilisation.

T ^7 HEN the grounds are examined, in a work
* * on natural history, of the classification of
species, it is at once observed that the irreducible, and
in consequence the fundamental characteristics, which
allow of the determination of each species, are very
few in number. Their enumeration always occupies
but a few lines.

26 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES:

The reason is that the naturalist only concerns
himself with the unvarying characteristics, and pays
no heed to the transitory characteristics. Moreover
these fundamental characteristics have as their
inevitable consequence an entire series of other
characteristics.

The case is the same with the psychological
characteristics of races. If details be gone into,
innumerable slight divergencies are found to exist
between different peoples and different individuals.
On the other hand, if only the fundamental charac-
teristics be considered, they are seen to be very few
in number for each people. It is only by examples
we shall shortly adduce examples that are highly
characteristic that it is possible to show clearly the
influence of this small number of fundamental
characteristics on the life of peoples.

The only way to set forth the bases of a psycho-
logical classification of races being to study in detail
the psychology of the different peoples, a task that
would demand in- itself several volumes, we shall
confine ourselves to indicating their main lines.

If only their general psychological characteristics
be considered, the human races may be divided into
four groups : (i) the primitive races ; (2) the inferior

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 27

races ; (3) the average races ; (4) the superior
races,

The primitive races are those in which no trace
of culture is met with. They have remained in that
state bordering on animality which was traversed by
our ancestors of the age of stone instruments. The
Fuegians and the aboriginal Australians are examples
in point.

Above the primitive races are found the inferior
races, represented more especially by the negroes.
They are capable of attaining to the rudiments of
civilisation, but to the rudiments only. They have
never been able to get beyond quite barbarian forms
of civilisation, even when chance has made them the
heirs, as at Saint Domingo, of superior civilisa-
tions.

Among the average races, we shall place the
Chinese, the Japanese, the Mongolians, and the
Semitic peoples. In the case of the Assyrians, the
Mongolians, the Chinese, and the Arabs, they have
created high types of civilisation, which only the
European peoples have been able to surpass.

Only the Indo-European peoples can be classed
among the superior races. Both in antiquity, at the
epoch of the Greeks and Romans, and in modern

28 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES:

times they alone have been capable of great inven-
tions in the arts, the sciences, and industry. It is to
them that is due the high level reached by civilisation
at the present day. It is they who have discovered
steam and electricity. The least developed of these
superior races, the Hindoos in particular, have risen
to a level in the arts, letters, and philosophy to which
the Mongolians, the Chinese, or the Semites have
never been able to attain.

No confusion is possible between the four great
divisions we have just enumerated. The mental
abyss that separates them is evident. It is only
when it is desired to subdivide these groups that the
difficulties begin. An Englishman, a Spaniard, or a
Russian belong all of them to the division of superior
peoples, but it is a matter of common know-
ledge that the differences between them are very
great.

To determine these differences with precision, it
would be necessary to take each people separately,
and to describe its character. This is the course we
shall shortly follow in the case of two of these peoples
in order to give an application of the method and to
show the importance of its consequences.

For the moment, we can only indicate very

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 29

summarily the nature of the principal psychological
elements which allow of the differentiation of races.

Among the primitive and inferior races and to
find such races it is not necessary to go to the pure
savages, since the lowest strata of the European
societies are homologous with the primitive men
a greater or less incapacity to reason is always met
with, an incapacity, that is, to associate in the brain,
with a view to compare them and to perceiving their
analogies and differences, the ideas produced by past
sensations or the words that are their signs, and the
ideas produced by present sensations. There results
from this incapacity to reason a great credulity and a
complete absence of the critical spirit In the case of
the superior being, on the contrary, the capacity of
associating ideas, and of drawing conclusions from
their association is very great, while the critical spirit
and precision are highly developed.

The inferior races further display but an in-
finitesimal power of attention and reflection ; they
possess the spirit of imitation in a high degree, the
habit of drawing inaccurate general conditions from
particular cases, a feeble capacity for observation and
for deriving useful results from their observations, an
extreme mobility of character and a very notable lack

30 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES:

of foresight. The instinct of the moment is their
only guide. Like Esau the type of the primitive
being they are inclined to sell their birthright for a
mess of pottage. When man is capable of weighing
his future against his immediate interest, of giving
himself a goal and pursuing it with perseverance, he
has realised a considerable progress.

The incapacity to foresee the distant consequences
of acts and the tendency to be guided solely by the
/ instinct of the moment condemns the individual as well
as the race to remain for ever in a very inferior state.
It is only in proportion as they are able to dominate
their instincts, in proportion, that is, as they acquire
will power and in consequence empire over them-
selves, that peoples can understand the importance of
discipline, the necessity of sacrificing themselves to
an ideal and of raising themselves to a civilised state.
Were it required to measure by a single standard the
social level of peoples in history, I should be disposed
to take as standard the degree of their aptitude for
dominating their reflex impulses. The Romans in
antiquity, the Anglo-Americans in modern times,
represent the peoples who have possessed this quality
in the highest measure. It has largely contributed to
assure their greatness.

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 31

It is by their general grouping and their respective
development that the various psychological elements
just enumerated form the mental constitutions which
allow of the classification of individuals and races.

Certain of these psychological elements appertain
to character, and others to the intelligence.

The superior races are distinguished from the
inferior races by their character as well as by their
intelligence, but it is more especially by their
character that the superior races are distinguished
from one another. This point has considerable
social importance, and it deserves to be clearly
established.

Character is formed by the combination, in varying
proportions, of the different elements which psycho-
logists are accustomed at the present day to designate
by the name of sentiments. Among the sentiments
which play the most important part must more
especially be noted perseverance, energy, and the
power of self-control, faculties more or less dependent
on the will. We would also mention morality among
the fundamental elements of character, although it is
the synthesis of somewhat complex sentiments. By|
morality we mean hereditary respect for the rules on
which the existence of a society is based. To possess

32 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES :

morality means, for a people, to have certain fixed
rules of conduct and not to depart from them. As
these rules vary with time and place, morality
appears in consequence to be a very variable matter,
and it is so in fact ; but for a given people, at a given
moment, it ought to be quite invariable. The off-
spring of character, and in nowise of the intelligence,
it is not solidly constituted until it has become
hereditary, and, in consequence, unconscious. In a
general way the greatness of peoples depends in a
large measure on the level of their morality.

The intellectual qualities are susceptible of being
slightly modified by education ; those of character
almost wholly escape its influence. When education
does affect them, it is only in the case of neutral
natures, whose will is almost non-existent, and who
are ready in consequence to follow whatever impulse
may be given them. These neutral natures are met
with in individuals, but very rarely in an entire
people, or, should they be thus observed, it is only in
times of extreme decadence.

The discoveries of the intelligence are easily
transmitted from one people to another. The
transmission of the qualities appertaining to character
is impossible. They are the irreducible fundamental

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 33

ments which allow of the differentiation of the **
ntal constitutions of the superior peoples. The
scoveries due to the intelligence are the common
patrimony of humanity ; qualities or defects of
character constitute the exclusive patrimony of each
people, they are the firm rock which the waters must

h day by day for centuries before they can even
r away its external asperities. They are the *
equivalent of the irreducible element of the species,
of the fins of fish, of the beak of the bird, of the tooth
of the carnivorous animal.

The character of a people and not its intelligence ^
determines its historical evolution, and governs its
destiny. It is always to be met with behind the
apparent fantasies of that most powerless chance,
that most fictitious Providence, that very real Fate
which, according to varying beliefs, guides the actions
of men.

The influence of character is sovereign in the life
of peoples, whereas that of the intelligence is in truth
very feeble. The Romans of the decadence possessed
intelligence far more refined than that of their
rude ancestors, but they had lost the qualities of
character of the latter ; the perseverance, the energy,
the invincible tenacity, the capacity to sacrifice them-

4

34 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES:

selves to an ideal, the inviolable respect for the laws
which had made the greatness of their forefathers.
It is due to their character that sixty thousand English
are able to maintain beneath their yoke two hundred
and fifty millions of Hindoos, many of whom are at
least their equals in intelligence, while a few surpass
them immensely as regards their artistic taste and the
depth of their philosophic views. It is in consequence
of their character that they are the masters of the
most gigantic colonial empire known to history. It
is character and not intelligence that goes to the
founding of societies, religions, and empires. Character
it is that enables peoples to feel and act. They have
never derived much advantage from too great a
desire to reason and think. 1

1 The extreme weakness and slight practical interest of the works of
professional psychologists is more especially to be ascribed to the fact
that they have confined themselves almost exclusively to the study of
the intelligence, and have almost entirely neglected that of charucter.
M. Paulhan in his interesting Essai sur les caracteres , and M. Ribot
in a few passages, unfortunately only too short, are almost the only
psychologists I can recall who have pointed out the importance of
character, and noted that it forms the true basis of the mental con-
stitution. "The intelligence," the learned professor of the College
of France rightly declares, "is only an accessory form of the mental
evolution. The fundamental type is character, which the intelligence
rather tends to destroy when it is too developed."

It is to the study of character that attention must be directed, as I am
attempting to show in these pages, when it is desired to describe the
comparative psychology of peoples. It would be difficult to understand

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 35

It is the mental constitution of races that determines
their conception of the world and of life, and, in con-
sequence, their conduct. We shall shortly support
this statement by important examples. Impressed in
a certain manner by external things, the individual
feels, thinks, and acts in a very different manner from
that in which will feel, think, and act those who
possess a different mental constitution. The con-
sequence is that it is impossible that mental
constitutions, constructed as they are on very varied
lines, should arrive at mutual comprehension. The
century-old conflicts of races are the result more
particularly of the incompatibility of their respective
characters. It is impossible to arrive at any under-
standing of history unless it be continually borne in
mind that different races cannot feel, think, or act in
the same manner, and that, in consequence, they
cannot comprehend one another. Doubtless the
different peoples have in their languages common

that a science so important for history and politics are its derivations
should never have been made the object of study, were it not for the
knowledge that it can be acquired neither in laboratories nor in books,
but only in the course of long travel. There is no indication moreover
that it is on the eve of being taken up by the professional psychologists,
who at the present day are more and more abandoning what used to be
their domain, and confining themselves to anatomical and psychological
researches.

36 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES:

words which they imagine are synonymous, but these
common words arouse entirely dissimilar sensations,
ideas, and modes of thought in those who hear them
uttered. It is necessary to have lived among peoples
whose mental constitution differs to a sensible degree
from our own, even though frequenting amongst them
only such individuals as speak our language and
have received our education, to appreciate the depth
of the gulf that separates the thought of the various
peoples. It is possible to obtain some idea of this
phenomenon, without having recourse to extensive
travel, by observing the great mental separation that
exists between the civilised man and woman, even
when the latter is highly educated. The man and
the woman may have common interests and senti-
ments, but never like chains of thought. They might
converse with one another for centuries without
understanding one another, because they are con-
structed on lines too different to allow of their being
impressed in the same manner by external things.
The difference in their logical faculties is alone
sufficient to create between them an insuperable
gulf.

This abyss between the mental constitution of the
different races explains how it is that the superior

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 37

peoples have never been able to impose their civilisa-
tion on inferior peoples. The idea, still so wide-
spread, that education can achieve this result, is one
of the most baneful illusions that the theoreticians of
pure reason have ever brought into existence. Thanks
to the memory possessed by the most inferior beings
a privilege in nowise confined to man it is doubt-
less possible for education to impart to an individual
somewhat low down in the human scale the totality
of the notions possessed by a European. A negro or
a Japanese may easily take a university degree or
become a lawyer ; the sort of varnish he thus acquires
is however quite superficial, and has no influence on
his mental constitution. What no education can
give him, because they are created by heredity alone,
are the forms of thought, the logic, and above all the
character of the Western man. Our negro or our
Japanese may accumulate all possible certificates
without ever attaining to the level of the average
European. It is easy to give him in ten years the
culture of a well-educated Englishman. To make a
real Englishman of him, that is to say a man acting
as an Englishman would act in the different circum-
stances of life, a thousand years would scarcely be
sufficient. It is only in appearance that a people

38 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES

suddenly transforms its language, its constitution, its
beliefs or its arts. For such changes to be really
accomplished, it would be necessary that it should be
able to transform its soul.

CHAPTER IV

THE PROGRESSIVE DIFFERENTIATION OF INDI-
VIDUALS AND RACES

The inequality between the different individuals of a race is greater in
proportion to the superiority of the race Mental equality of all the
individuals of inferior races To appreciate the differences that
separate races, the superior individuals of each people and not its
average representatives must be compared The progress of civilisa-

Ition tends towards a greater and greater differentiation of indi-
viduals and races Consequences of this differentiation The psy-
chological reasons which prevent its becoming too considerable
The individuals of the superior races are highly differentiated as
regards their intelligence, and very slightly so as regards their cha-
racter How heredity constantly tends to reduce individual superi-
orities to the average type of the race Anatomical observations
confirming the progressive psychological differentiation of races,
individuals, and sexes.

THE superior races are not distinguished from
the inferior races solely by their psychologica
and anatomical characteristics. A further distinction
is supplied by the diversity of the elements of which
they are composed. All the individuals of the inferior
races, even as regards those of different sex, are on

39

40 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES:

sensibly the same mental level. They all of them
resemble one another, and they are thus a perfect ex-
emplification of the equality dreamed of by our modern
socialists. In the case of the superior races, on the
contrary, the intellectual inequality of the individuals
and the sexes is the law.

For this reason, in order to appreciate the differences
that separate peoples, their superior representatives
when they possess such and not their inferior must
be compared. Hindoos, Chinese, and Europeans are
but slightly differentiated intellectually so far as their
average representatives are concerned. On the other
hand, when their superior representatives are compared
their differentiation is found to be considerable.

With the progress of civilisation, not only races, but
also the individuals of each race those at least of the
superior races tend to become more and more diffe-
rentiated. The result of modern civilisation, clashing
with our dreams of equality, is not to render men
more and more equal intellectually, but, on the con-
trary, more and more different.

One of the principal consequences of civilisation is,
on the one hand, to differentiate races by the daily
increasing intellectual exertion it demands of peoples
who have attained to a high degree of culture, and

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 41

on the other to widen the distinctions between the
various grades of which each civilised people is
composed.

The conditions of modern industrial evolution
condemn the inferior classes of civilised peoples to a
highly specialised labour which, far from increasing
their intelligence, merely tends to lessen it. A
hundred years ago, a workman was a veritable artist
capable of executing all the details of any piece of
mechanism of a watch for example. To-day, he is
a mere toiler, who never produces more than one
speciality, who spends his life boring the same holes,
polishing the same portion of an article, driving the
same machine. The result is that the atrophy of his
intelligence is soon complete. The manufacturer or
the engineer who directs the workman is obliged, on
the contrary, owing to the pressure of discoveries and
competition, to possess far more numerous acquire-
ments and much more enterprise and invention than
his predecessor of a century back. His brain is con-
stantly exercised, and, undergoing the law which
applies to all organs in such a case, becomes more
and more developed.

Tocqueville had already pointed out this progressive
differentiation of the social grades at a period when

42 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES:

industry was far from having attained to the degree
of development it has reached to-day. " In propor-
tion as the principle of the division of labour receives
more thorough application, the workman becomes
weaker, of narrower intelligence, and more dependent,
Art progresses, the artisan falls back. Every day the
difference between the employer and the workman
increases."

At the present day, a superior people may be con-
sidered, from the intellectual point of view, to consti-
tute a sort of pyramid of steps, the majority of which
are formed by the masses of the population, the upper
steps by the intelligent classes, 1 and the point of the
pyramid by a very small elite of men of science, inven-
tors, artists, and writers, an exceedingly restricted
group as compared with the rest of the population, but

1 I say intelligent without adding cultured. It is a characteristic
error of the Latin peoples to believe that intelligence and culture go
together. Culture merely implies the possession of a certain amount of
memory, but to acquire it no judgment, reflection, initiative or invention
are necessary. Persons of very restricted intelligence are often met
with among those who have passed examinations, while it is quite as
common to find persons of a very slight degree of culture who are highly
intelligent. The upper portion of our pyramid would be formed then
by elements taken from all classes. All the professions contain a very
small number of notable intelligences. Still it appears probable, in
virtue of the laws of heredity, that what are known as the superior social
classes contain the greater number, and it is doubtless herein that their
superiority lies.

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 43

the only group that determines the rank of a country
in the intellectual scale of civilisation. It would suffice
for it to disappear for all that constitutes the glory of
a nation to disappear at the same time. "Were
France, as Saint-Simon has rightly observed, to lose
suddenly its fifty leading men of science, its fifty
leading artists, its fifty leading manufacturers, its fifty
leading agriculturists, the nation would become a
body without a soul, it would be decapitated. If on
the contrary it were to lose all its officials, the French
would grieve at the loss because they are soft-
hearted, but the country would sustain very little
harm."

With the progress of civilisation, the differentiation
between the extreme grades of a population proceeds
with great rapidity ; it even tends, on occasion, to
increase in what mathematicians call geometrical
progression. It would suffice in consequence, if
certain effects of heredity did not intervene, to
allow time to act to see the superior grades of a
population separated intellectually from the inferior
grades by a distance as great as that which separates
the white man from the negro, or even the negro from
the monkey.

For several reasons, however, this intellectual differ-

44 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES:

entiation of the social grades, considerable though it
becomes, is not accomplished with the rapidity that
might be possible theoretically. In the first place, the
differentiation is almost confined to the intelligence,
and affects the character to a very slight extent ; and
we know that it is the character and not the intelli-
gence that plays the fundamental part in the life of
peoples. In the second place, the masses are tending
at the present day, in virtue of their organisation and
discipline, to become all-powerful. Their hatred of
intellectual superiority being evident, it is probable
that every intellectual aristocracy is destined to be
violently destroyed by periodic revolutions, in propor-
tion as the masses become organised, and just as the
ancient nobility was destroyed a century ago. When
Socialism shall have become master in Europe, its
only chance of enduring will be to exterminate all
the individuals without exception endowed with a
superiority capable of raising them, however slightly,
above the most humble level.

The two causes I have just set forth are of an arti-
ficial order, since they are the result of conditions of
civilisation that may vary. But there is a further and
far more important cause it is an irresistible natural
law which will always prevent the elite of a nation,

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 45

not from becoming intellectually differentiated from
the inferior grades, but from becoming so differenti-
ated too rapidly. The present conditions of civilisa-
tion, which tend more and more to differentiate men
of the same race, are confronted by the powerful laws
of heredity which tend to bring about the disappear-
ance of the individuals who surpass the average in
too marked a manner, or at least to bring them down
to this average.

Observations already old, recorded by the authors
of investigations into heredity, have proved that the
descendants of families distinguished by their intelli-
gence are subject sooner or later and most usually
at an early date to a process of degeneration which
tends to extinguish them entirely.

Great intellectual superiority seems, then, to carry
with it the penalty that those who possess it leave
behind them degenerate offspring. In reality the
point of the social pyramid of which I spoke above
can only subsist on the condition that it assimilates
elements from below. If all the individuals com-
posing this elite were to be relegated to an isolated
island, their inter-marriages would result in the
formation of a race displaying a variety of degene-
rate symptoms and destined in consequence to dis-

46 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES:

appear speedily. Great intellectual superiorities may
be compared to the botanical monstrosities created
by the artifice of a gardener. Left to themselves
they die off or return to the average type of the
species, for the species is all powerful since it repre-
sents the long series of ancestors,

Attentive study of the different peoples shows
that while the individuals of a given race may be
immensely differentiated as regards the intelligence,
they are but slightly differentiated as regards the
character, that unalterable rock of which I have
already shown the permanence throughout the ages.
In studying a race it should be considered, in conse-
quence, from two very different points of view. From
the intellectual point of view its value depends on a
small elite to which is due the scientific, literary, and
industrial progress of a civilisation. From the point
of view of character, acquaintance with the average is
alone important. The strength of peoples is always
dependent on the level of this average. Peoples may
do at a pinch without an intellectual Mite, but not
without a certain level of character. We shall shortly
prove this statement.

It is thus seen that while the individuals of a race
become more and more differentiated intellectually as

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 47

time goes on, they always tend, as far as character is
concerned, to oscillate round the average type of the
race. It is to this average type, which progresses
very slowly, that the great majority of the members
of a nation belong. Around this fundamental kernel
is found in the case at least of the superior peoples
a thin layer of eminent minds, whose action is of
capital importance as regards civilisation, but is with-
out importance as regards the race. Incessantly
being destroyed, it is incessantly being renewed at
the expense of the average grades, which, for their
part, vary but very slowly, since the slightest varia-
tions, in order to become durable, must be accumu-
lated in the same direction by heredity during several
centuries.

It was several years ago that I arrived, basing my
conclusions on researches of a purely anatomical
order, at the idea just enunciated touching the differ-
entiation of individuals and races, and to justify which
I have now invoked none but psychological reasons.
As the two kinds of observation lead to the same
results, I may be allowed to recall some of the con-
clusions of my earlier investigations. They are based
on measurements executed on several thousands of
skulls, ancient and modern, belonging to different

48 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES:

races. I proceed to give the more essential pas-
sages :

The volume of the skull bears a close relation to the intelligence,
when, leaving individual cases out of consideration, series are dealt
with. It is then found that what distinguishes inferior from superior
races is not the slight variations in the average capacity of their skulls,
but this essential fact that the superior race contains a certain number
of individuals whose brain is highly developed, whereas the inferior
race contains no such individuals. Races differ, in consequence, not in
respect to the masses that constitute them, but in respect to the small
number of individuals who stand out from the crowd. The average
difference between the skull in the case of two peoples except when
quite inferior races are under consideration is never very considerable.

When the skulls are compared of the various human races, belonging
to the past and present, it is found that the races in which the volume
of the skull presents the greatest individual variations are the most
highly civilised races ; that in proportion as a race grows civilised, the
skulls of the individuals composing it become more and more differenti-
ated ; a fact which leads to the result that civilisation conduces not to
intellectual equality, but to an inequality that is always growing more
pronounced. Anatomical and physiological equality only exist in the
case of individuals of quite inferior races. The differences between the
members of a tribe of savages, all of whom follow the same occupation,
are perforce of the slightest. Between the peasant whose vocabulary
consists of some three hundred words, and the man of learning who is
familiar with a hundred thousand words and with the ideas that corre-
spond to them, the difference is, on the contrary, enormous.

I should add to what precedes that the differentiation of individuals
brought about by the development of civilisation is also apparent in the
case of the sexes. Among inferior peoples or the inferior classes of
superior peoples the man and the woman are intellectually on much the
same level. On the other hand, in proportion as peoples grow civilised
the difference between the sexes is accentuated.

The volume ot the male and female skull, even when the subjects
compared, as in my investigations, are strictly of the same age, height,
and weight, presents differences that increase rapidly with the degree of
civilisation. Very slight in the case of the inferior races, these differ-

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 49

ences become immense in the case of the superior races. In these
superior races the feminine skulls are often scarcely more developed
than those of the women of very inferior races. Whereas the average
volume of the skulls of male Parisians is such as to range them among
the largest known skulls, the average of the skulls of female Parisians
classes them among the smallest skulls with which we are acquainted,
almost on a level with the skulls of Chinese women, and scarcely above
the feminine skulls of New Caledonia. 1

1 Dr. Gustave le Bon, Recherches anatomiqius et mathematiqties sur
les variations de volume dtt cerveau et sur leurs relations avec V intelli-
gence : 8vo, 1879 (Memoir crowned by the Academy of Sciences and
by the Society of Anthropology).

CHAPTER V

FORMATION OF THE HISTORICAL RACES

How historical races are formed Conditions which allow of different
races combining to form a single race Influence of the number of
the individuals involved in the process, of the dissimilarity of their
characters, of the environments, etc. Results of cross-breeding
Causes of the great inferiority of half-breeds Mobility of the new
psychological characteristics created by cross-breeding How these
characteristics come to be fixed The critical periods of history
Cross-breeding constitutes an essential factor in the formation of
new races, and at the same time a powerful factor in the dissolution
of civilisations Importance of the regime of castes Influence of
environment Environment can only exert its influence on new
races in process of formation, and on races whose ancestral
characteristics are giving way before the action of cross-breeding
Environment is without influence on old races Various examples
The majority of the historical races of Europe are still in process
of formation Political and social consequences Why the period
of formation of historical races will soon be over.

WE have already remarked that genuine races,
in the scientific sense of the word, are
scarcely to be met with among civilised peoples, but
only historical races, by which is meant races created

by the chances of conquest, immigration, politics, etc.,

50

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES 51

%

and formed, in consequence, of a mixture of individuals
of different origins.

How do these heterogeneous races come to combine
and to form an historical race possessing common
psychological characteristics ? This is the point we
are about to investigate.

Let it first of all be observed that the elements
brought together by chance do not always combine.
The German, Hungarian, Slav, and other populations
that live under Austrain rule form perfectly distinct
races which have never attempted to fuse. The
Irish, who live under the rule of the English, are
another example of fusion not taking place. As
for the quite inferior peoples, such as Redskins,
Australians, or Tasmanians, not only do they not
combine with the superior peoples, but they dis-
appear rapidly after they have come in contact with
them. Experience proves that every inferior people
which is confronted with a superior people is
inevitably condemned to disappear at an early date.

Three conditions are necessary to allow of races
fusing and forming a new and more or less homo-
"geneous race.

The first condition is that the races which are to
interbreed shall not be too unequal in number ; the

52 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES:

second, that their characters shall not be too dis-
similar ; the third, that they shall be , subjected for
a long period to identical conditions of environment.

The first of the conditions that have just been
enumerated is of capital importance. A small
number of white men transported into the midst of
a numerous negro population disappear, after a few
generations, without leaving any trace of their blood
among their descendants. All the conquerors who
have invaded too numerous populations have dis-
appeared in this way. They have been able, as has
been done by the Latins in Gaul or the Arabs in
Egypt, to leave behind them their civilisation, their
arts and their language, but they have never been
able to bequeath their blood.

The second of the preceding conditions is also
of very great importance. Doubtless very different
races, the black and the white for example, may fuse,
but the half-breeds that result constitute a population
very inferior to those of which it is sprung, and utterly
incapable of creating, or even of continuing, a civilisa-
tion. The influence of contrary heredities saps their
morality and character. When half-breeds, the off-
spring of white men and negroes, have chanced to
inherit a superior civilisation, as in Saint Domingo,

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 53

civilisation has speedily been overtaken by the
>t lamentable degeneration. Cross-breeding may
be a source of improvement when it occurs between
superior and sufficiently allied races, such as the
English and the Germans of America, but it always
constitutes an element of degeneration when the
races, even though superior, are too different. 1

To cross two peoples is to change simultaneously
both their physical constitution and their mental con-
stitution. Cross-breeding, moreover, constitutes the
only infallible means at our disposal of transforming
in a fundamental manner the character of people,
heredity being the only force powerful enough to
contend with heredity. Cross-breeding allows of the
creation of a new race, possessing new physical and
psychological characteristics.

The characteristics thus created are at the outset

1 All the countries inhabited by too large a proportion of half-breeds
are, solely for this reason, given over to perpetual anarchy, unless they
are ruled by an iron hand. Such will inevitably be the fate of Brazil.
White men form only a third of its population. The remainder is
composed of negroes and mulattoes. The famous Agassiz rightly
observed "that it is sufficient to have visited Brazil for it to be im-
possible to deny the decadence that results from cross-breeding which
goes on in this country to a greater extent than elsewhere. This cross-
breeding is fatal, he says, to the best qualities whether of the white
man, the black, or the Indian, and produces an indescribable type
whose physical and mental energy suffers."

54 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES:

very weak and fluctuating. To fix them long,
hereditary accumulations are necessary. The first
effect of interbreeding between different races is to
destroy the soul of the races, and by their soul we
mean that congeries of common ideas and sentiments
which make the strength of peoples, and without
which there is no such thing as a nation or a father-
land. The period of interbreeding is the critical
period in the history of peoples, a period of com-
mencement and hesitancy which all nations have had
to traverse, for there is scarcely a European people
that is not formed of the debris of other peoples. It is
a period full of intestine struggles and of vicissitudes,
and it continues so long as the new psychological
characteristics are not fixed.

What precedes shows that interbreeding should be
considered at once as a fundamental element in the
formation of new races and as a powerful factor in
the dissolution of ancient races. It is with reason,
then, that all the peoples that have reached a high
degree of civilisation carefully avoid intermarrying
with foreigners. Had it not been for the admirable
regime of castes, the handful of Aryans that invaded
India, some three thousand years ago, would have
been quickly swamped by the immense masses of the

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 55

dark-coloured populations that surrounded them on
every side, and no civilisation would have come into
existence on the soil of the great peninsula. If in
modern times the English had not followed the
same system, if they had consented to intermarry
with the indigenous inhabitants, their gigantic Indian
Empire would long since have slipped from their
grasp. A people may sustain many losses, may be
overtaken by many catastrophes, and yet recover from
the ordeal, but it has lost everything, and is past
recovery, when it has lost its soul.

It is at the moment when decadent civilisations
have become the prey of peaceful or warlike invaders
that interbreeding fills in succession the destructive
and then the creative role of which I have just spoken.
Cross-breeding destroys an ancient civilisation because
it destroys the soul of the people that possesses it.
It fosters the creation of a new civilisation because
the old psychological characteristics of the races
in contact have been destroyed, and because new
characteristics may be formed under the influence of
the new conditions of existence.

It is only on races in course of formation, and
whose ancestral characteristics have been destroyed
in consequence by contrary heredities, that the in-

56 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES:

fluence can be effective of the last of the factors
mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, the
influence of environment. While very slight on
ancient races, the influence of environment is, on the
contrary, very great on new races. Cross-breeding,
by destroying the ancestral, psychological charac-
teristics, creates a sort of blank tablet on which the
action of environment, continued during centuries,
may succeed in impressing and finally in giving fixity
to new psychological characteristics. Then, and
then only, the formation of a new historical race
results. It is in this way that the French race was
constituted.

The influence of environment physical or moral
is in consequence very great or very slight according
to circumstances, and this is the explanation of the
contrary opinions that have been formulated with
regard to its action. We have just seen that this
influence is very great on races in course of formation ;
but had we been considering ancient races solidly
established by the long action of heredity, we could
have said that the influence of environment is, on the
contrary, almost inappreciable.

As regards moral environment, we have proof of
the insignificance of its action in the failure of our

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 57

Western civilisations to influence the peoples of the
East, even when these latter have been subjected to
their contact during several generations ; the Chinese
inhabitants of the United States are a case in point.
The slight power of physical environment is shown
by the difficulties that attend acclimatisation. Trans-
ported into surroundings too different from those to
which it is accustomed, an ancient race and the
statement is equally applicable to men, animals, and
plants perishes sooner than submit to transformation.
Egypt has always been the tomb of the many different
races that have effected its conquest. Not a single
people has been able to acclimatise itself in the
country. Neither Greeks, Romans, Persians, Arabs,
nor Turks have been able to leave behind them a
trace of their race. The only type that is met with
is that of the impassible Fellah whose features
exactly resemble those engraved seven thousand
years ago on the tombs and palaces of the Pharaohs
by the Egyptian artists.

The majority of the historical races of Europe are
still in course of formation, and it is important that it
should be known that this is the case with a view to
understanding their history. At the present day the
Englishman is the only European who represents an

58 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES:

almost completely fixed race. In his case the ancient
Briton, the Saxon, and the Norman have given way
to a new and highly homogeneous type. In France,
on the contrary, the Provencal is very different from
the Breton, the inhabitant of Auvergne from the
inhabitant of Normandy. Still, if there does not exist
as yet an average type of the Frenchman, there at
least exist average types of certain regions. Un-
fortunately these types are very distinct as regards
their ideas and character. It is difficult in con-
sequence to devise institutions which shall suit them
all equally well, and it is only by dint of energetic
concentration that it is possible to lend them some
community of thought. Our profound divergences
of sentiment and belief, and the political upheavals
which result therefrom, are due, in the main, to
differences of mental constitution, which the future
alone will perhaps be able to efface.

Such has always been the situation when different
races have found themselves in contact. The dis-
sentiments and intestine struggles have always been
the more acute in proportion as the races in presence
have been the more different. When they are too
unlike it becomes absolutely impossible to make them
live under the same institutions and the same laws.

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 59

The history of great empires composed of different
races has always been identical. Most often they
disappear with their founder. Among modern
nations, only the English and the Dutch have been
successful in imposing their yoke on Asiatic peoples
differing widely from them, and their success is solely
due to the fact that they have respected the manners,
customs, and laws of the peoples in question, leaving
them in reality to govern themselves, and confining
their role to appropriating a portion of the taxes, to
engaging in commerce, and to maintaining peace.

Apart from these rare exceptions, all the great
empires composed of dissimilar peoples owe their
foundation to force and are destined to perish by
violence. To enable a nation to constitute itself and
to endure, it is necessary that its formation should be
slow, and the result of the gradual fusion of but
slightly different races, interbreeding, living on the
same soil, undergoing the action of the same environ
ment, and having the same institutions and beliefs
After the lapse of several centuries these distinct
races may come to form a highly homogeneous
nation.

As the world grows older, the races become more
and more stable and their transformation by means

60 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES

of fusion rarer and rarer. As it advances in age,
humanity feels the burden of heredity grow heavier,
and transformations become more difficult. So far as
Europe is concerned, it may be said that the era of
the formation of historical races will soon be over.

BOOK II

HO [V THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CHARACTERISTICS
OF RACES ARE D ISP LA YED IN THE VARIOUS
ELEMENTS OF THEIR CIVILISATIONS

BOOK II

HOW THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CHARACTERISTICS
OF RACES ARE D ISP LA YED IN THE VARIOUS
ELEMENTS OF THEIR CIVILISATIONS

CHAPTER I

THE VARIOUS ELEMENTS OF A CIVILISATION CON-
SIDERED AS AN EXTERIOR MANIFESTATION
OF THE SOUL OF A PEOPLE

The elements of which a civilisation is composed are the exterior
manifestations of the soul of the peoples, which have created them

The importance of these various elements varies with the different
peoples According to the several peoples it is the arts, literature,
institutions, etc., that fill the fundamental role Examples from
antiquity : the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans The evolution of
the different elements of a civilisation may be independent of the
general march of that civilisation Examples supplied by the arts

What they express Impossibility of finding in a single element
of a civilisation the measure of the level of that civilisation
Elements which assure the superiority of a people Elements
which philosophically are very inferior may be socially very
superior.

"^HE different elements, languages, institutions,
ideas, beliefs, arts, literature, of which a

civilisation is composed should be regarded as the

63

64 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES:

exterior manifestation of the soul of the men
who have created them. The importance, however,
of these elements as the expression of the soul of
a people varies greatly with the period and the races.

Few books relating to works of art appear at the
present day that do not contain the statement that
works of art are the faithful rendering of the thought
of peoples and the most important expression of their
civilisation.

Doubtless it is often true that this is the case, but
the rule is a long way from being absolute, and the
development of the arts is far from corresponding
invariably to the intellectual development of nations.
While there are certain peoples for whom works of
art are the most important manifestation of their
soul, there are others, who occupy, moreover, a high
rank in the scale of civilisation, among whom the
arts have played but a very secondary part. If the
history of the civilisation of each people had to be
written on the understanding that only one of its
elements was to be considered, the element chosen
ought to vary in the case of each people. For some
peoples the element would be the arts, but for others
it would be their institutions, their military organisa-
tion, their industry, their commerce, etc., that would

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 65

give us the best knowledge of them. It is important
to establish this point at the outset, for it will enable
us later to understand how it is that the various
elements of a civilisation have undergone very un-
equal transformations when transmitted from one
people to another.

Among the peoples of antiquity, the Egyptians and
Romans offer highly characteristic examples of this
inequality in the development of the various elements
of a civilisation, and even in the various branches of
which each of these elements is composed.

Let us begin by considering the Egyptians. Their
literature was always very weak, their painting of
very poor quality. In architecture and statuary, on
the contrary, they produced masterpieces. Their
monuments still excite our admiration. The Egyptian
statues that have come down to us, the Scribe, the
Cheik-el-Beled, Rahotep, Nefert-Ari, and many others
would still be models at the present day, and it was
only during a very short period that they were sur-
passed by the Greeks.

With the Egyptians let us compare the Romans,
whose role in history was so preponderating. They
lacked neither educators nor models, since they came
after the Egyptians and Greeks ; and yet they did

66 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES:

not succeed in creating a personal art. No people,
perhaps, has ever displayed less originality in its
artistic productions. The Romans held the arts in
very slight esteem, scarcely regarding them from
other than a utilitarian point of view, and looking
on them merely as a sort of imported article
analogous to the other products, such as metals,
aromatics, and spices for which they were indebted
to foreign peoples. At the period when they were
already masters of the world, the Romans had no
national art, and even later on, when universal peace,
wealth, and the needs of luxury somewhat developed
their weak, artistic sentiments, it was always to
Greece that they went for models and artists. The
history of Roman architecture and sculpture is
scarcely more than an appendix to the history of
the sculpture and architecture of Greece.

On the other hand this great Roman people, which
was so inferior in the arts, developed three other
elements of civilisation to the highest pitch. It
possessed military institutions which insured it the
empire of the world ; political and juridical institu-
tions which still serve us as models ; and finally,
it created a literature which for centuries has been
the source of inspiration of our own.

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 67

We thus have a striking example of the unequal
development of the elements of a civilisation in the
case of two nations whose high degree of culture
cannot be contested, and we can divine the errors
that would result from taking as sole standard but
one of these elements the arts for example. We
have just found that among the Egyptians the arts,
with the exception of painting, were extremely
original and remarkable, while literature, on the
contrary, did not rise above mediocrity. Among
the Romans the arts were mediocre and without a
trace of originality, but they shone in the field of
literature, and their military and political institutions
were of the highest order.

The Greeks themselves, though one of the peoples
that has displayed the most superiority in the most
different fields, may also be cited in proof of the
unequal way in which the development of the various
elements of a civilisation proceeds. At the Homeric
epoch their literature was already very brilliant, since
the songs of Homer are still regarded as the models
with which the students of the European universities
are condemned to saturate themselves ; a view that
has been taken for centuries past. But the discoveries
of modern archaeology have proved that, at the

68 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES :

period to which the Homeric songs belong, Greek
sculpture and architecture were grossly barbarian,
and confined to crude imitations of Egyptian and
Assyrian art.

However, it is more especially the Hindoos that
furnish us with an example of the unequal develop-
ment of the different elements of a civilisation. As
regards architecture they have been surpassed by
very few peoples. As regards philosophy the depth
of their speculations has only been attained to by
European thought at a quite recent date. In litera-
ture, if they do not reach the level of the Greeks
and Latins, they have nevertheless produced ad-
mirable work. Their statuary, on the contrary, is
mediocre, and much below that of the Greeks. In
the domain of science and in that of historical
knowledge, they have absolutely nothing to show,
and they exhibit an absence of precision that is not
met with to an equal degree in any other people.
Their sciences have been mere childish speculations ;
their histories absurd legends, containing not a single
exact date and probably not a single exact event.
In their case, once again, the exclusive study of the
arts would be insufficient to determine the level of
their civilisation.

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 69

Many other examples might be adduced in support
of what precedes. There are races which, although
they have never occupied an absolutely superior rank,
have succeeded in creating an absolutely personal art
bearing no visible relation to anterior models. The
Arabs are a case in point. Less than a century after
they had invaded the old Greco-Roman world, they
had so utterly transformed the Byzantine archi-
tecture they had begun by adopting, that it would
be impossible to determine the types that had in-
spired them, if it were not that we are still able to
consult the series of intermediary monuments.

Moreover, even if a people should not possess any
artistic or literary aptitude, it is capable of creating
a civilisation of a superior order. This happened in
the case of the Phenicians, whose sole superiority was
their skill in commerce. It was they who civilised
the ancient world by bringing all its parts into
communication ; but as far as they themselves were
concerned they produced scarcely anything, and the
history of their civilisation is the history of their
imerce.

Finally, there are peoples among whom all the
lents of civilisation have remained in an inferior
state with the exception of the arts. The Mongolians

70 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES :

were a people of this kind. The monuments they
raised in India, in a style about which there is scarcely
anything Hindoo, are so magnificent that competent
artists declare that some of them rank among the
most beautiful monuments that have been raised by
the hand of man ; and yet nobody could think of
classing the Mongols among the superior races.

It will be noticed, moreover, that even among the
most civilised peoples, it is not always at the culmi-
nating period of their civilisation that the arts attain
to the highest degree of development. Among the
Egyptians and among the Hindoos the most perfect
monuments are generally the most ancient ; while in
Europe, it was in the Middle Ages, an epoch regarded
as semi-barbarian, that flourished that marvellous
Gothic art whose admirable productions have never
been equalled.

In consequence it is quite impossible to judge of
the level of a people solely by the development of
its arts, which constitute, I repeat, but one of the
elements of its civilisation, and an element whose
superiority is not proven any more than the
superiority of literature is proven. It often happens,
on the contrary, that it is among the peoples at the
head of civilisation the Romans, for instance, in

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 71

ancient times and the Americans at the present day
that artistic productions show the most weakness.
Frequently too, as we just remarked, it has been
in semi-barbarous ages that the peoples have pro-
duced their literary and artistic masterpieces their
artistic masterpieces more especially. It would even
seem that the period of personality in the arts, in the
case of a people, is a growth belonging to its child-
hood or its youth and not to its maturity ; and if it
be considered that, among the utilitarian preoccu-
pations of the new world of which we catch a glimpse
of the dawn, the role of the arts is scarcely observable,
we may foresee the day when they will be classed if
not among the inferior, at least among the quite
secondary manifestations of a civilisation.

There are many reasons why the progress of the
arts in their evolution should not be parallel to that
of the other elements of a civilisation, and should not
in consequence be always a sure indication of the
state of this civilisation. Whether in the case of
Egypt, of Greece, or of the various European peoples,
we observe this general law that as soon as art has
reached a certain level, as soon that is as certain
masterpieces have been produced, there immediately
commences a period of decadence entirely independent

72 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES :

of the movement of the other elements of the
civilisation. This decadent phase of the arts subsists
until a political revolution, an invasion, the adoption
of new beliefs or any other factor introduces new
elements into art. It was in this way that in the
Middle Ages the Crusades were the source of fresh
knowledge and new ideas, which gave an impulsion
to art that resulted in the transformation of the
Roman style into the Gothic style. It was in this
way again that, several centuries later, the revival
of Greek and Latin studies brought about the
transformation of Gothic art into the art of the
Renaissance. In India, too, the Mussulman invasions
caused the transformation of Hindoo art in precisely
the same fashion.

It is also of importance to observe, that since the
arts express in general fashion certain of the needs
of civilisation and correspond to certain sentiments,
they are fated to undergo transformations in con-
formity with these needs, and even to disappear
entirely if the needs and the sentiments which have
given birth to them should themselves be transformed
or disappear. It will in nowise follow, however, that
the civilisation is on this account in decadence, and
here once more we are confronted with the absence

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 73

of parallelism between the evolution of the arts and
that of the other elements of a civilisation. At no
period in history has civilisation been at so high a
pitch as at the present day, and at no period perhaps
has art been more commonplace and less personal.
The religious beliefs, the ideas and the needs which
made art an essential element of civilisation at the
periods when it had temples and palaces for its
sanctuaries having disappeared, art has become an
accessory, an instrument of pleasure to which it is
not possible to devote either much time or much
money. Being no longer a necessity, it can scarcely
escape being artificial and imitative. At the present
day there are no longer peoples who possess a national
art, and each people, in architecture as in sculpture,
lives on more or less happy copies of the work of
bygone epochs.

These modest copies doubtless represent needs or
caprices, but it is clear that it is impossible that they
should express our modern ideas. I admire the nai've
works of our artists of the Middle Ages, as seen in
their paintings of saints, of Christ, of Paradise and
Hell, all of which were of fundamental importance
at the time and the principal concern of existence;
but when painters who no longer entertain these

74 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES:

beliefs cover our walls with primitive legends or
childish symbols in an attempt to return to the
technique of another age, they merely produce
wretched imitations without interest for the present
and destined to arouse contempt in the future.

The only real arts, the only arts which are the
expression of an epoch, are those in which the artist
represents what he feels or what he sees instead of
confining himself to the imitation of forms corre-
sponding to needs or beliefs we have ceased to possess.
The only sincere painting of the present day is that
which reproduces the things by which we are sur-
rounded, just as the only sincere architecture is that
of the five-storied house, the viaduct, and the railway
station. This utilitarian art corresponds to the needs
and ideas of our civilisation. It is as characteristic
of the epoch as were formerly the Gothic church and
the feudal castle. For the archaeologist of the future
the great modern caravansaries and the old Gothic
churches will be of equal interest because they will be
successive pages in those books of stone which each
century leaves behind it, while he will disdain as
useless documents the sorry counterfeit copies of so
many modern artists.

Every aesthetic system represents the ideal of an

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 75

epoch and of a race, and for the sole reason that
epochs and races are different, the ideal must con-
stantly be varying. From the philosophic point of
view all ideals are of equal worth, for they constitute
more transitory symbols.

The arts then, like all the elements of a civilisation,
are the exterior manifestation of the soul of the people
that has created them ; but we ought to recognise,
however, that they are far from constituting in the
case of all peoples the most exact manifestation of
their thought.

This demonstration was necessary. For the im-
portance in the case of a given people of a given
element of civilisation is a measure of the power of
transformation which that people brings to bear on
the element in question when it borrows it from a
foreign race. If its personality displays itself more
especially in the arts, for example, its reproductions
of imported models are sure to be deeply marked by
its own imprint. On the contrary it will transform
but very slightly the elements that are incapable of
serving to interpret its genius. When the Romans
adopted the architecture of Greece they did not
make it the object of radical modifications, because
they did not put what was most characteristic of their
soul into their monuments.

76 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES :

Still, even in the case of such a people as the
Romans, who were without a personal architecture,
and who were constrained to go to the foreigner
for their models and their artists, art is obliged
in the course of but few centuries to undergo the
influence of environment and to become, almost in
spite of itself, the expression of the race that has
adopted it. The temples, palaces, triumphal arches,
and bas-reliefs of ancient Rome are the work of
Greeks or of pupils of the Greeks ; and yet the
character of these monuments, their destination,
their ornaments, even their dimensions, do not
arouse in us the delicate, poetic memories of the
Athenian genius, but rather the ideas of force, of
domination, and of military passion with which the
mighty soul of Rome was imbued. Thus, even in
the field in which it shows itself least personal, a
race can accomplish nothing that does not bear some
trace of the fact that it was due to its initiative, and
without revealing something of its mental constitution
and innermost thought.

The explanation is that the true artist, whether
architect or poet, possesses the magic faculty of
expressing in his syntheses the soul of an epoch and
of a race. Very impressionable, very unconscious,

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 77

thinking more especially in images, and reasoning
but little, artists are at certain epochs the faithful
mirrors of the society in which they live ; their
works are the most exact documents to which
recourse can be had with a view to evoking a
vanished civilisation. They are too unconscious not
to be sincere, and too impressed by their surround-
ings not to give faithful expression to the ideas,
sentiments, needs and tendencies of their environ-
ment. They are not free to create what they choose,
and the fact constitutes their strength. They are
imprisoned in a network of traditions, ideas, and
beliefs, the sum total of which constitutes the soul of
a race and an epoch, the inheritance of sentiments,
thoughts, and inspirations, whose influence is all
powerful over them because it governs the obscure
regions of the unconscious in which their works are
elaborated. Were we without these works, and did
we know nothing of the vanished centuries but what
is related of them in the absurd narratives and arti-
ficial arrangements of the books of history, the real
past of each people would be almost as great an
enigma to us as that of the mysterious Atlantiades
submerged, according to Plato, by the waters.

The essential characteristic, then, of the work of

78 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES :

art is to be the sincere expression of the needs and
ideas of the age that gives it birth. Of all the
various languages which relate the story of the past,
works of art, those of architecture in particular, are
the most intelligible. More sincere than books, less
artificial than religions and languages, they express
both the sentiments and the needs of their period.
The architect builds the dwelling-places of men and
those of the gods, and it was always within the
precincts of the temple or those of the house that
were elaborated the first causes of the events which
constitute history.

We may conclude from what precedes, that while
the various elements of which a civilisation is com-
posed are indeed the expression of the soul of the
people that has created them, certain of these
elements though which of them varies with the
races and also with the epochs in the case of the
same race are a more exact expression of the soul
of a race than others.

Since, however, the nature of these elements varies
with the different peoples and the different epochs,
it is evident that it is impossible to find a single
element capable of serving as a common standard
whereby to gauge the level of the different civilisations.

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 79

It is also evident that a hierarchical classification
cannot be established among these elements, for the
classification would vary from century to century,
the importance of the elements considered varying
itself with the periods.

If the value of the diverse elements of a civilisation
were to be judged solely from the point of view of pure
utility, it might be affirmed that the most important
elements of a civilisation are those which allow one
people to subject another, that is to say military
institutions. But if this test were adopted, it would
be necessary to rank the Greeks, a nation of artists,
philosophers, and writers, after the Romans with
their invincible cohorts, the virtuous and learned
Egyptians after the semi-barbarian Persians, and the
Hindoos after the Mongols who were also semi-
barbarians.

History is but little concerned with these subtle dis-
tinctions. The only superiority before which it always
bows is military superiority, which is very rarely
accompanied by a corresponding superiority in the
other elements of civilisation, or at least does not
long allow the maintenance at its side of this latter
superiority. Unfortunately military superiority
cannot decline among a people without that people

8o THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES :

being fated to disappear. It has always been when
they had reached the apogee of civilisation, that the
superior peoples have had to retire before barbarians,
much their inferiors as regards intelligence, but posses-
sing certain qualities of character and warlike aptitudes
to which too refined civilisations have always been fatal.
It is necessary, in consequence, to arrive at the
saddening conclusion that it is the elements which,
philosophically speaking, are inferior, that are the
most important from the social point of view. If
the laws of the future are to be those of the past, it
may be said that to have attained to too high a
degree of intelligence and culture is what is most
harmful to a people. Peoples perish as soon as the
qualities of character which form the groundwork of
their soul begin to decline, and these qualities decline
as soon as the civilisation and intelligence of a people
reach a high level.

CHAPTER II

HOW INSTITUTIONS, RELIGIONS, AND LANGUAGES
ARE TRANSFORMED

The superior races are as powerless as the inferior races to transform
suddenly the elements of their civilisation Contradictions pre-
sented by the peoples which have changed their religions, lan-
guages, and arts The example of Japan In what respect these
changes are only apparent The profound transformations under-
gone by Buddhism, Brahmanism, Mahometanism and Christianity
according to the various races by which they have been adopted
The variations undergone by institutions and languages according
to the race that adopts them That the words which in different
languages are considered to correspond represent very dissimilar
ideas and modes of thought Impossibility for this reason of
translating certain languages Why, in books of history, the
civilisation of a people sometimes seems'... to have undergone pro-
found changes Limits of the reciprocal influence of different
civilisations.

"\ ~\ 7 E have shown in a previous book that the
* * superior races are wholly unable to induce
inferior races to accept their civilisation or to thrust
it on them. Taking one by one the most powerful
means of action at the disposal of Europeans
education, institutions, beliefs we have proved their

absolute inefficacy as means of changing the social

7 si

82 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES :

state of the inferior peoples. We have endeavoured
to establish, that since all the elements of a civili-
sation correspond to a certain well-defined mental
constitution created by heredity in the course of a
long past, it is impossible to modify them without
changing the mental constitution of which they are
the outcome. Such a task is beyond the power of
conquerors, and can only be accomplished by the
lapse of centuries. We have also shown that it is
only by a series of successive stages, analogous to
those traversed by the barbarians who destroyed the
Greco-Roman civilisation, that a people can rise in
the scale of civilisation. If it be sought, by means of
education, to spare a people these stages, all that is
done is to disorganise its morality and its intelli-
gence, and to reduce it in the end to a level inferior to
that it would have reached if it had been left to itself.
The arguments we have applied to inferior races
are equally applicable to superior races. If the
principles we have set forth in this work are correct,
it ought to be clear that the superior races are also
incapable of suddenly transforming their civilisation.
They, too, require time, and need to traverse suc-
cessive stages. If the superior peoples seem at times
to have adopted beliefs, institutions, languages and

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 83

arts differing from those of their ancestors, they have
done so in reality only after having slowly and
profoundly transformed them so as to bring them
into touch with their mental constitution.

History appears to contradict on every page the
preceding proposition. It offers us frequent ex-
amples of peoples changing the elements of their
civilisation, adopting new religions, new languages,
new institutions. Some peoples abandon the beliefs
they have held for centuries and are converted to
Christianity, Buddhism or Mahometanism : others
transform their language ; yet others radically
modify their institutions and their arts. It even
seems that it rests with a conqueror or an apostle to
provoke such transformations, or even that they
result from a mere caprice.

History, however, in offering these accounts of
sudden revolutions does no more than accomplish one
of its habitual missions : the creation and propagation
of enduring errors. When these alleged changes are
closely studied, it is soon perceived that it is only the
names of things that easily vary, whereas the realities
hidden behind the words continue to exist and are
only transformed with exceeding slowness.

To prove this assertion, and to show at the same

84 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES:

time how the slow evolution of things goes on
behind denominations that remain unchanged, it
would be necessary to study the elements of each
civilisation in the case of the different peoples, that
is to re-write their history. I have already essayed
this laborious task in several volumes ; it will not be
asked, in consequence, that I should again attempt it
here. Leaving aside the numerous elements of
which a civilisation is composed, I shall choose but
one of them as an example : the arts.

Before approaching, however, in a special chapter,
the study of the evolution accomplished by the arts
in passing from one people to another, I shall make a
few remarks respecting the changes undergone by
the other elements of civilisation, in order to show
that the laws applicable to one of these elements are
perfectly applicable to all of them, and that if the
arts of the different peoples correspond to a certain
mental constitution, as much is to be said of their
languages, institutions, beliefs, etc., which in conse-
quence cannot change suddenly and pass indifferently
from one people to another. 1

1 I shall not deal here with the case of Japan, having already treated
it elsewhere, while I shall certainly return to it on a future occasion.
It would be impossible to study in a few pages a question on the
subject of which eminent statesmen are the victims of delusions which

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 85

It is more especially in connection with religious
beliefs that this theory may appear paradoxical, and
yet it is precisely in the history of these very
beliefs that the best examples are to be found in
proof that it is as impossible for a people suddenly
to change the elements of its civilisation, as for an
individual to alter his stature or the colour of his
eyes.

Nobody, doubtless, is ignorant that all the great
religions, Brahmanism, Buddhism, Christianity, or
Mahometanism, have provoked conversions en masse
among entire races who have seemed to adopt them
on a sudden ; however, when a closer study is made
of these conversions it is soon observed that what
the peoples have more especially changed is the
name of their old religion and not their religion
itself, and that in reality the adopted beliefs have
undergone the transformations necessary to bring

are shared unfortunately by certain philosophers wanting in insight.
The prestige adhering to military triumphs, even though achieved at
the expense of mere barbarians, still remains for many minds the
criterion of the level of a civilisation. It is possible to drill an army
of negroes in accordance with European military principles and to
teach them to handle rifles and canon, but their mental inferiority and
the consequences it involves will not be modified on this account. The
varnish of European civilisation boasted at present by Japan in nowise
corresponds to the mental condition of the race. It is a trumpery
borrowed garment which will soon be rent by violent revolutions.

86 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES :

them into touch with the old beliefs they have
replaced, and of which in reality they are a mere
continuation.

The transformations undergone by beliefs in pass-
ing from one people to another are often indeed so
considerable, that the newly adopted religion has no
longer any visible relationship with that of which it
has kept the n'ame. The best example is offered us
by Buddhism, which, after having been transported
into China, has become so unrecognisable that the
learned took it at first to be an independent religion
and were a long time before they recognised that
this religion was merely Buddhism transformed by
the race that had adopted it. Chinese Buddhism is
in no sort the Buddhism of India, itself very different
from the Buddhism of Nepaul, which in turn is
sufficiently distinct from the Buddhism of Ceylon.
In India, Buddhism was a schism from Brahmanism
which preceded it, and from which at bottom it
differed to no very great extent ; in China, it was also a
schism from earlier beliefs to which it is closely related.

The rigorous proof that is possible in the case of
Buddhism is forthcoming as well in that of Brah-
manism. The races of India being extremely
varied, it was easy to presume that, under identical

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 87

names, they would have extremely different religious
beliefs. Doubtless all the Brahmanic peoples regard
Vishnou and Siva as their principal divinities and the
Vedas as their sacred books ; but of these funda-
mental gods the religion has retained but the name,
and of the sacred books but the text. Around these
central and common features have grown up inumer-
able cults in which are found, according to the races,
the most varied beliefs : monotheism, polytheism,
fetichism, pantheism, the worship of ancestors, of
demons, of animals, etc. Were the religions of
India to be judged solely by what is found concern-
ing them in the Vedas, not the least idea would be
obtained of the gods and beliefs of the immense
peninsula. The title of the sacred books is vene-
rated by all the Brahmans, but there survives in
general nothing of the religion taught by these
books.

Islamism itself, in spite of the simplicity of its
monotheism, has not evaded this law ; it is a far cry
from the Islamism of Persia to that of Arabia and
that of India. The Hindoo, essentially a polytheist,
has contrived to render polytheistic the most mono-
theistic of beliefs. For the fifty millions of Hindoo
Mahometans, Mahomet and the saints of Islam are

88 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES:

scarcely more than new gods added to thousands of
others. Islamism has ever been unable to establish
in India that equality of all men which elsewhere
was one of the causes of its success. The Mussulmans
of India, like the other Hindoos, practise the system
of castes. In the Deccan, among the Dravidian
populations, Islamism has become so unrecognisable
that it can scarcely be distinguished from Brahmanism;
indeed it would not be distinguished from it at all
but for the name of Mahomet, and for the mosque
where the prophet, become a god, is worshipped.

It is not necessary to go as far as India to observe
the profound modifications undergone by Islamism
in passing from one race to another. It suffices to
consider our great possession, Algeria. It contains
two very different races : Arabs and Berbers, both
of them Mussulmans. The Islamism of the former
is far removed from that of the latter ; the polygamy
of the Koran has become monogamy among the
Berbers, whose religion is scarcely more than a fusion
between Islamism and the old paganism practised
by the race since the distant ages of Carthaginian
rule.

The religions of Europe themselves are not excepted
from the common law which obliges beliefs to under-

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 89

go a transformation in accordance with the soul of
the races by which they are adopted. As in India,
the letter of the dogmas fixed by the texts has
remained invariable ; but these dogmas are vain
formulae of which each race interprets the meaning
after its own fashion. Under the uniform denomina-
tion of Christians are found in Europe veritable
pagans, such as the Bas-Breton who worships idols ;
fetichists, such as the Spaniard who adores amulets ;
polytheists, such as the Italian who venerates as
very different divinities the madonnas of each village.
Were this study to be prosecuted further, it would
be easy to show that the great religious schism of
the Reformation was the necessary consequence of
the interpretation of one and the same religious book
by different races : those of the North, wishing to
discuss their belief, regulate their life themselves, and
those of the South having remained far behind from
the point of view of independence and the philosophic
spirit. No example would be more convincing.

These are facts, however, the development of which
would lead us beyond our scope. We shall have to
deal still more briefly with the two other fundamental
elements of civilisation, institutions and languages,
because it would be necessary to enter into technical

90 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES:

details that wholly surpass the limits of this work.
What is true in the case of beliefs, is equally true in
that of institutions ; these latter cannot be transmitted
from one people to another without undergoing
transformation. Not wishing to multiply examples,
I beg the reader merely to consider how greatly, in
modern times, the same institutions, imposed by force
or persuasion on different races, have been transformed,
though retaining identical names. I shall demonstrate
the fact in a forthcoming chapter in connection with
the different regions of America.

Institutions are the outcome in reality of necessities
on which the will of a single generation of men can
have no action. For each race, and for each phase
of the evolution of that race, there are conditions of
existence, sentiments, thoughts, opinions, hereditary
influences which imply certain institutions and do
not imply others. The label a Government bears
is of very slight importance. It has never been
accorded a people to choose the institutions which
appear to it to be the best. Should some rare stroke
of chance allow a people to choose its institutions, it
will be unable to keep them. The numerous revolu-
tions, the successive changes of constitution, affected
by the French during the last hundred years con-

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 91

stitute an experience which should long since have
settled the opinion of statesmen on this point. I
believe, moreover, that it is scarcely elsewhere than
in the obtuse brain of the masses and the narrow
minds of some few fanatics that the idea can persist
that important social changes are to be brought about
by legislative acts. The only useful role of institutions
is to give legal sanction to changes which manners
and public opinion have ended by accepting. Insti-
tutions are moulded by these changes, but they are
not in advance of them. The character and thought
of men are not to be modified by institutions. It is
not by institutions that a people is rendered religious
or sceptical, or that it is taught to conduct its own
affairs without incessantly demanding of the State
that it shall forge it a chain.

I shall not dwell on the question of languages any
more than on that of institutions, and shall confine
myself to drawing attention to the fact that even
where a language is fixed by writing, it is necessarily
transformed in passing from one people to another,
a truth that renders so absurd the idea of an universal
language. Doubtless the Gauls, in spite of their
immense numerical superiority, had adopted the Latin
language less than two centuries after their conquest,

92 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES:

but they were quick to bring the newly adopted
tongue into harmony with their needs, and the logic
peculiar to their bent of mind. Modern French is
the final result of these transformations.

It is impossible for different races to speak the
same language for any length of time. The chances
of conquest, the interests of its commerce may doubt-
less bring a people to adopt another language in the
place of its mother tongue, but after the lapse of a
few generations the language adopted will have been
entirely transformed. The transformation will be
the more thorough in proportion as the race from
which the language has been borrowed is the more
different from that which has borrowed it.

Dissimilar languages are always certain to be met
with in countries inhabited by different races. India
affords an excellent example in point. The great
peninsula being inhabited by numerous different races,
it is not astonishing that two hundred and forty
languages should, according to the linguistic author-
ities, be spoken in it, some of them differing more
from each other than do French and Greek. These
two hundred and forty languages do not include some
three hundred dialects ! The widest spread among
these languages is quite modern, since it has only

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 93

existed for three centuries ; it is Hindustanee, a
language formed by a combination of the Persian
and Arabian spoken by the Mussulman conquerors
and Hindi, one of the principal tongues of the invaded
regions. Conquerors and conquered soon forgot their
primitive language, exchanging it for a new language
adapted to the needs of the new race produced by
the interbreeding of the various peoples brought
together.

I cannot dwell longer on the matter, and am
obliged to confine myself to indicating the funda-
mental ideas. Were I able to enter into the necessary
developments, I would go further and would say that
where peoples are different, the words considered
among them as corresponding represent modes of
thinking and feeling so far apart, that in reality their
languages have no synonyms, and real translation
from one language into the other is impossible. How
wholly this is the case will be understood by observing
how in the same country, and among the same race,
the same word corresponds in the course of centuries
to quite dissimilar ideas.

Old words represent the ideas of the men of the
past. Words which at their origin were the signs of
real things soon have their meaning altered in conse-

94 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES:

quence of changes in ideas, manners, and customs.
Recourse is still had to these timeworn signs, for it
would be too difficult to change them, but there is
no correspondence between what they represented
at a given moment, and what they signify at the
present day. In the case of peoples at a great
distance from us, and whose civilisations were without
analogy with our own, translations can only give
words absolutely deprived of their real primitive sense,
words, that is, evoking ideas in our mind which have
no relation to those they formerly evoked. This
phenomenon is specially striking in connection with
the ancient languages of India. The ideas of the
Indian people are indistinct, their logic has no rela-
tionship with our own, and their words have never
had that precise and definite meaning which the
lapse of centuries and the turn of our minds has
ended by giving words in Europe. There are books,
the Vedas for example, the translation of which,
though it has been vainly attempted, is impossible. 1
It is difficult enough to penetrate the thought of the

1 Talking of the numerous attempts to translate the Vedas, an
eminent Indian scholar, Mr. Earth, remarks: "All these various and
at times so contradictory investigations have one result ; they demon-
strate how impossible it is for us to make a translation, in the true
sense of the word, of the Vedas."

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 95

individuals with whom we live, but from whom we
are separated by certain differences of age, sex, and
education ; to penetrate the thought of races on
whom the dust of centuries has accumulated is a
task no scholar will ever succeed in accomplishing.
All the learning it is possible to acquire merely serves
to show the complete uselessness of attempts of the
kind.

Brief and slightly developed though the preceding
examples be, they suffice to show how profound are
the transformations peoples effect in the elements of
civilisation they borrow. The importance of the
elements borrowed often appears to be considerable,
because the change in names is in fact sudden ; this
importance is in reality very slight. In the course
of centuries, thanks to the slow labours of generations
and in consequence of successive additions, the
borrowed element ends by differing greatly from the
element of which it originally took the place. His-
tory, which takes note more especially of appearances,
pays but little attention to these successive variations,
and when it tells us, for example, that a people
adopted a new religion, what we at once represent
to ourselves is not at all the beliefs really adopted, but
the religion such as we know it at the present day.

96 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES :

It is necessary to study these slow adaptations with
the utmost closeness, in order to understand their
genesis, and to detect the differences that separate
words from realities.

The history of civilisations is thus composed of slow
adaptations, of slight successive transformations. If
these latter appear to us to be sudden and consider-
able, it is because, as in geology, we suppress the
intermediate phases and only consider the extreme
phases.

In reality, however intelligent and gifted a people
be supposed to be, its capacity for absorbing a new
element of civilisation is always very restricted. The
brain cells do not assimilate in a day what it has
taken centuries to create, and what is adapted to the
sentiments and needs of organisms that differ from
one another. Only slow hereditary accumulations
allow of such assimilations. Further on, when we
come to study the evolutions of the arts among the
most intelligent of the peoples of antiquity, the
Greeks, we shall see that many centuries were neces-
sary before the rude copies of Assyrian and Egyptian
models were left behind, and, after long successive
stages, those masterpieces were produced which are
still the admiration of humanity

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 97

It must also be observed that all the peoples which
have succeeded one another in history with the
exception of a few primitive peoples such as the
Egyptians and Chaldeans have had little to assimi-
late beyond the elements of civilisation which consti-
tute the inheritance of the past ; elements they have
transformed in accordance with their mental consti-
tution. The development of the world's civilisations
would have been infinitely slower, and the history of
the various peoples would have been one eternal
recommencement, if they had been unable to profit
by the materials elaborated before their time. The
civilisations created some seven or eight thousand
years ago, by the inhabitants of Egypt and Chaldaea,
have served as a store of materials to which all the
nations have had recourse in turn. The arts of
Greece owe their origin to the arts created on the
banks of the Tigris and the Nile. The Grecian style
gave birth to the Roman style which, under the action
of Oriental influences, has given birth to the Byzantine,
Roman, and Gothic styles, styles which vary accord-
ing to the genius and age of the peoples among
whom they flourished, but styles that have a common
origin.

What we have just said in connection with the arts
8

98 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES:

is applicable to all the elements of a civilisation :
institutions, languages, and beliefs. The European
languages are derived from a mother-tongue which
was spoken in the past on the central plateau of
Asia. French law is an offshoot of Roman law,
itself the offshoot of earlier codes of law. The Jewish
religion proceeds directly from the Chaldaean beliefs.
Associated with Aryan beliefs it has become the
great religion which for nearly two thousand years
has exerted its sway over the Western peoples. Our
sciences themselves would not be what they are were
it not for the slow labour of centuries. The great
founders of modern astronomy, Copernicus, Kepler,
and Newton, are the lineal descendants of Ptolemy,
whose books retained their influence down to the
fifteenth century, while Ptolemy descends, through
the Alexandrian school, from the astronomers of
Egypt and Chaldsea. We thus get a glimpse, in
spite of the formidable gaps of which history is full,
of a slow evolution of our knowlege which takes us
back through the successive ages and empires to the
dawn of those ancient civilisations, which modern
science is attempting to link with the primitive times
when humanity had no history. But if the source is
common, the transformations progressive or regres-

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 99

sive which each people effects, according to its
mental constitution, in the elements it borrows are
very varied ; and it is the history of these transforma-
tions that constitutes the history of civilisation.

We have just seen that the fundamental elements
of which a civilisation is composed are peculiar to
each people, that they are the result, the expression
of its mental structure, and that in consequence they
cannot pass from one race to another without under-
going the most profound changes. We have also
seen that the extent of these changes is marked on
the one hand by linguistic necessities which oblige
us to employ the same words to designate very
different things, and on the other hand by historical
necessities which lead us to take into account only
the extreme forms of a civilisation, and to neglect
the intermediary forms by which they are connected.
When studying, in the next chapter, the general laws
of the evolution of the arts, we shall be able to show
with still greater precision the succession of the
changes which take place in the fundamental elements
of a civilisation when they pass from one people to
another.

CHAPTER III

HOW THE ARTS ARE TRANSFORMED

Application of the principles already set forth to the study of the evolu-
tion of the arts among the Oriental peoples Egypt The religious
ideas from which its arts are derived Developments that await its
arts when they are transplanted amid different races : Ethiopians,
Greeks, and Persians Primitive inferiority of Grecian art Slow-
ness of its evolution Adoption and evolution in Persia of Grecian
art, Egyptian art, and Assyrian art The transformations under-
gone by the arts depend on the race and not on religious beliefs
Examples supplied by the great transformations undergone by
Arabian art according to the races which have adopted Islamism
Application of our principles to the investigation of the origin
and evolution of the arts in India India and Greece went to the
same sources, but in consequence of the diversity of the races they
developed arts having no relationship Immense transformations
undergone by architecture in India among the different races in
spite of the similarity of their beliefs.

IN examining the relations between the mental
constitution of a people, its institutions, its
beliefs, and its language, I have had to confine
myself to brief indications. To elucidate such sub-
jects, it would be necessary to pile up volumes.

In the case of the arts, a clear and precise state-

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES 101

ment is infinitely easier. Institutions and beliefs are
matters whose definition is doubtful, whose interpreta-
tion is obscure. The reality, which changes with
every epoch, has to be searched for in the ancient
texts in which it lies concealed, and laborious argu-
mentation and criticism must be resorted to in order
to arrive at conclusions which, at the finish, are open
to discussion. Works of art, and in particular monu-
ments, are very definite objects, and easy of interpre-
tation. The books of stone are the most luminous of
books, the only books that never lie, and it is for this
reason that I have given them a preponderant place
in my works on the history of the civilisations of the
East. I have always held literary documents in the
utmost suspicion. They are often deceptive and they
rarely instruct. The monument rarely deceives and
is always instructive. The monument is the best
guardian of the thought of vanished peoples, and the
mental blindness is to be pitied of the specialists who
concern themselves solely with the inscriptions it
may bear.

Let us now proceed to study in what respect arts
are the expression of the mental constitution of a
people, and what are the transformations they under-
go in passing from one civilisation to another.

102 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES:

In this inquiry, I shall consider only the Eastern
arts. The genesis and the transformation of the
European arts have been subjected to identical laws ;
but to follow their evolution among the various races
it would be necessary to enter into details which would
be beyond the very restricted scope of this work.

Let us take, to begin with, the arts of Egypt, and
examine the destiny that awaited them among three
different races among which they were successively
transplanted : the negroes of Ethiopia, the Greeks,
and the Persians.

Of all the civilisations that have flourished on the
globe, that of Egypt has found the most complete
expression in the arts. It is expressed therein with
such force and clearness that the artistic types that
saw the light on the banks of the Nile could only be
suitable to the Egyptians, and were not adopted by
other peoples until they had been considerably trans-
formed.

The Egyptian arts, and more especially the Egyp-
tian architecture, were the outcome of an ideal,
peculiar to the race, which for fifty centuries was the
constant pre-occupation of an entire people. The
dream of the Egyptians was to create for man an
imperishable dwelling in contrast with his ephemeral

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 103

existence. This race, unlike, in this respect, to all other
races, despised life, and courted death. What inte-
rested it more than anything else was the motionless
mummy which, its eyes of enamel incrusted in its
golden mask, gazed eternally, from the depths of its
gloomy resting place, on mysterious hieroglyphics.
Guarded in its sepulchral dwelling, vast as a palace,
against all profanation, the mummy was surrounded
on the painted and sculptured walls of endless
corridors by all that had charmed it during its brief
terrestial existence.

Egyptian architecture is more especially a funereal
and religious architecture, having more or less for its
object the mummy and the Gods. For them it is
that the subterranean vaults were excavated, that the
obelisks, the pylones, and the pyramids were raised,
and for them that the pensive giants reclined on
their thrones of stone in a pose so majestic and so
harmonious.

Everything about this architecture is stable and
massive because it aimed at being eternal. If the
Egyptians were the only people ot antiquity with
which we were acquainted, it could indeed be said
that art is the most faithful expression of the soul
of the race of which it is the creation.

104 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES:

Peoples differing widely from one another the
Ethiopians, an ^inferior race ; the Greeks and the
Persians, superior races have borrowed their arts
either from Egypt alone, or from Egypt and Assyria.
Let us see what they became in their hands.

Let us deal, to begin with, with the inferior people
we have just mentioned with the Ethiopians.

It is known that at a late period in Egyptian
history (that of the twenty-fourth dynasty), the
peoples of the Soudan, taking advantage of the
anarchy and decadence of Egypt, seized some of
its provinces and founded a kingdom which, having
Napata and Meroe successively for its capital, main-
tained its independence for several centuries. Dazzled
by the civilisation of the vanquished people, they
endeavoured to copy their monuments and arts ; but
these copies, of which we possess specimens, are for
the most part but very rude efforts. These negroes
were barbarians, condemned by their mental inferiority
never to shake off their barbarism : and in spite of the
civilising influence of the Egyptians, it is a fact that
they never did shake it off. There is no example in
ancient or modern history of a negro people having
reached a certain level of civilisation ; and on every
occasion when a superior civilisation, by one of

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 105

those accidents which in ancient times occurred in
Ethiopia, and in modern times in Haiti, has fallen
into the hands of the negro race, this civilisation
has speedily reverted to wretchedly inferior forms.

Under a very different latitude, another race, also
barbarian at the time, but a white race, that of the
Greeks, borrowed from Egypt and Assyria the first
models of its arts and confined itself at first to
making crude copies. The artistic productions of
these two great civilisations were furnished the
Greeks by the Phoenicians, who were masters of the
sea routes that connect the shores of the Mediter-
ranean, and by the peoples of Asia Minor, the masters
of the land routes that lead to Nineveh and Babylon.

Everbody is aware how immeasurably the Greeks
surpassed their models in the end. The discoveries
of modern archaeology have shown, however, how
rude were their first attempts, and that they required
centuries before they came to produce the master-
pieces which have made them immortal. The Greeks
devoted some seven hundred years to this difficult
task of converting a foreign art into a personal and
superior art ; but the progress realised during the
last century is more considerable than that effected
during all the preceding ages. It is not the superior

106 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES:

stages of civilisation, but the inferior stages that a
people finds the most difficulty in surmounting. The
most ancient productions of Greek art, those discovered
at Mycenae and belonging to the twelfth century before
our era, point to entirely barbarian efforts, and are
rude copies of Oriental objects ; six centuries later
Greek art is still very Oriental ; the Apollo of Tenea
and the Apollo of Orchomenes bear a singular resem-
blance to the Egyptian statues ; but the progress now
becomes very rapid, and, a century later, we reach
Phidias and the marvellous statues of the Parthenon
that is to say, an art that has thrown off the influence
of the East, while it is very superior to the models to
which it had gone so long for inspiration.

Architecture followed a like evolution, though its
successive steps are less easily established. We are
ignorant of what the palaces of the Homeric poems,
belonging to about the ninth century before our era,
may have been like ; but the bronze walls, the
pinnacles brilliant with colour, the animals in gold
and silver guarding the doors, of which the poet tells
us, make us think at once of the Assyrian palaces
covered with plates of bronze and enamelled bricks,
and guarded by sculptured bulls. In any case, we
know that the type of the most ancient Greek Doric

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 107

columns, which seem to date from the seventh century,
is met with in Egypt at Karnak and Beni- Hassan ;
that several of the details of the Ionic column are
borrowed from Assyria ; but we also know that these
foreign elements, to some extent superimposed at
first, then blended, and finally transformed, gave rise
to new columns very different from their primitive
models.

At another extremity of the ancient world, Persia
will offer us the example of an analogous adoption
and evolution, though of an evolution that remained
incomplete, because it was suddenly interrupted by
foreign conquest. Persia did not have seven cen-
turies, as Greece did, but only two hundred years, in
which to create an art. So far only one people, the
Arabs, has been successful in giving birth to a personal
art in so short a time.

The history of Persian civilisation scarcely begins
before Cyrus and his successors, who succeeded, five
centuries before our era, in taking possession of
Babylon and Egypt, that is of the two great cities of
civilisation, whose glory illumined at the time the
Eastern world. The Greeks, who were to wield the
supremacy in their turn, did not count as yet.
The Persian empire became the centre of civilisa-

io8 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES:

tion until, three centuries before our era, it was over-
thrown by Alexander, whose conquest at once
removed elsewhere the centre of the civilisation of
the world. Without an art of their own, the Persians,
when they had possessed themselves of Egypt and
Babylon, borrowed artists and models from the
conquered countries. Their empire having lasted
but two centuries, they did not have time to modify
these arts profoundly, but at the moment of their
overthrow they had already begun to transform them.
The ruins of Persepolis, which are still standing,
acquaint us with the genesis of these transformations.
We doubtless meet in them with the fusion, or rather
with the superposition, of the arts of Egypt and
Assyria, mingled with some Greek elements ; but
new elements, notably the lofty Persepolitan column
with its bicephalous capitals, are already present, and
authorise the belief that if the Persians had disposed
of a longer interval of time, this superior race would
have created an art as personal, if not as lofty, as that
of the Greeks.

This supposition is supported by an examination of
the monuments of Persia dating from a period ten
centuries later. To the dynasty of the Achaemenides,
overthrown by Alexander, succeeded that of the

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 109

Seleucides, then that of the Arsacides, and finally
that of the Sassanides, overthrown in the seventh
century by the Arabs. With the advent of these
latter conquerors, Persia acquires a new architecture,
and when it again raises monuments they offer an
incontestable imprint of originality, the result of a
combination of Arabian art with the ancient archi-
tecture of the Achsemenides, modified by its com-
bination with the somewhat Grecian art of the
Arsacides (gigantic doorways taking in the entire
height of the fagade, enamelled bricks, ogival
arcades, etc.). It was this new art that the Mongols
were to transport into India and to modify in their
turn.

In the preceding examples we see the varying
degrees of transformation which a people can effect
in the arts of another people, according to the race
and to the time it has been able to devote to this
transformation.

In the case of an inferior race, the /Ethiopians,
although it had centuries at its disposal, we have
seen that the borrowed art was made to return to an
inferior form, the race being endowed with insufficient
brain capacity. In the case of a race both superior
and with centuries in which to operate, we have

no THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES:

observed a complete transformation of the ancient
art into a new and very superior art. In the case of
another race, the Persians, not ranking so high as
the Greeks, and who were limited in the matter
of time, we have merely encountered great skill
of adaptation and the beginnings of a transforma-
tion.

Apart, however, from the examples, most of them
distant, which we have just cited, there are many
others more modern, of which the specimens are still
standing, and which show the magnitude of the trans-
formations a race is compelled to effect in the arts it
borrows. These examples are the more typical, in
that they are furnished by peoples professing the same
religion but of different origin. I refer to the Mussul-
mans.

When the Arabs possessed themselves of the
greater part of the old world in the seventh century
of our era, and founded the gigantic empire which
soon stretched from Spain to the centre of Asia and
included the north of Africa, they found themselves
in presence of a clearly defined architecture : the
Byzantine architecture. At first they simply adopted
it for the edification of their mosques both in Spain,
Egypt, and Syria. The mosque of Omar at Jeru-

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION in

salem, that of Amrou at Cairo, and other monuments
still standing show us this adoption. However, it
did not last long, and in the various countries the
monuments are seen to be transformed from century
to century. We have shown the genesis of these
changes in our " History of the Civilisation of the
Arabs." They are so considerable, that there is no
trace of resemblance between a monument of the
early years of the conquest, such as the mosque of
Amrou at Cairo (742), and one of the close of the
great Arabian period, such as the mosque of Kait-
Bey (1468). We have shown in our explanations and
diagrams that, in the different countries subjected to
the rule of Islam Spain, Africa, Syria, Persia,
India the monuments present differences so con-
siderable that it is really impossible to class them
under the same denomination, as can be done, for
example, in the case of the Gothic monuments which,
in spite of their varieties, offer evident analogies.

These radical differences in the architecture of
the Mussulman countries cannot be the result of
diversity of beliefs, since the religion is the same ; it
is the result of racial divergencies whose influence
on the evolution of the arts is as profound as it is on
the destinies of empires.

ii2 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES:

If this assertion is exact, we ought to expect to
find very dissimilar monuments in a country inhabited
by different races, even in the face of identical beliefs
and unity of political domination. This is precisely
the phenomenon that is observed in India. It is in
India that it is easiest to find examples in support
of the general principles set forth in this work, and it
is for this reason that I am always referring to the
great peninsular, which constitutes the most suggestive
and the most philosophic of books of history. At
the present day it is the only country in which, merely
by travelling from one spot to another, it is possible
to go from age to age and to gaze on the still existing
series of successive stages which humanity has had
to traverse to reach the higher levels of civilisation.
All the forms of evolution are met with in India: the
stone age has its representatives there, and so too has
the age of electricity and steam. Nowhere can a
better view be obtained of those great factors which
preside over the genesis and evolution of civilisa-
tions.

It is by applying the principles developed in the
present work that I have attempted to solve a
problem to which the key has long been sought :
the origin of the arts of India, The subject being

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 113

very little known and constituting an interesting
application of our ideas on the psychology of races,
we shall here sum up its most essential lines. 1

As regards the arts, India does not make its
appearance in history until very late. Its oldest
monuments, such as the columns of Asoka, the
temples of Karli, Bharhut, Sanchi, etc., scarcely date
further back than two centuries before our era.
When they were constructed the majority of the
old civilisations of the ancient world, those of Egypt,
Persia, and Assyria, even that of Greece itself, had
terminated their cycle and entered the night of
decadence. A single civilisation, that of Rome, had
replaced all the others. The world knew but one
master.

India, which emerged so tardily from the shadows
of history, was in a position then to borrow much
from anterior civilisations. The profound isolation,
however, in which it was formerly admitted the
country had always lived, and the astonishing
originality of its monuments, which possess no visible

1 For technical details which cannot even be touched on here I shall
refer the reader to my work, Les Monuments de flnde^ one vol. in folio,
illustrated by four hundred plates from my own photographs, plans, and
drawings (Didot). Many of these plates are given on a reduced scale
in my work Les Civilisations dans F Inde, 4to, 800 pages.

9

n 4 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES:

relationship with any of those that had preceded
them, long resulted in the hypothesis of borrowings
from abroad being set aside.

Side by side with their indisputable originality, the
early Indian monuments display a superiority of
execution which they were not destined to surpass
in the lapse of centuries. Works of so high a degree
of perfection had doubtless been preceded by long
anterior tentative efforts ; and yet, in spite of the
most minute researches, no monument of an inferior
order revealed the trace of these efforts.

The recent discovery, in certain isolated regions
of the north-west of the peninsular, of debris of
statues and monuments clearly revealing Greek
influences, had ended by inducing Indian antiquarians
to believe that India had borrowed its arts from
Greece.

The application of the principles set forth above
and the most careful study of the majority of the
monuments still existing in India have led us to
quite a different conclusion. India, in our opinion, in
spite of its accidental contact with Greek civilisation,
borrowed none of its arts from Greece and could not
borrow any of them from this source. The differences
between the two races were too great, their thought

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 115

was too unlike, their artistic geniuses were too incom-
patible for them to have influenced one another.

The examination of the ancient monuments
scattered over India shows, moreover, immediately
that there is no relationship between its arts and
those of Greece. Whereas our European monuments
are full of elements borrowed from Grecian art, the
monuments of India present absolutely no such
elements. The most superficial study proves that we
are in presence of extremely different races, and that
geniuses more unlike I would even say more anti-
pathetic have never perhaps existed than the Greek
genius and the Hindu genius.

This general notion is merely accentuated when a
more thorough and penetrating study is made of the
monuments of India and of the inner psychology of
the peoples that created them. It is soon observed
that the Hindu genius is too personal for it to undergo
a foreign influence at variance with its thought
Doubtless such a foreign influence can be imposed
by force ; but however long it may be supposed to
last, it remains exceedingly superficial and transitory.
It would seem as if between the mental constitution
of the peoples of India and that of other peoples,
there were barriers as great as the formidable

n6 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES :

obstacles created by nature between the great
peninsula and the other countries of the globe.
The Hindu genius is so specific that, whatever be the
object necessity obliges it to imitate, the object is
immediately transformed and becomes Hindu. Even
in architecture, where it is nevertheless difficult to
conceal borrowings, the personality of this strange
genius, this faculty of rapid modification is quick to
reveal itself. It is possible, no doubt, to make a
Hindu architect copy a Greek column, but he will
not be prevented from transforming it rapidly into a
column which at first sight will be said to be Hindu.
Even at the present day, though European influence is
now so powerful in India, such transformations are
daily observable. If a Hindu artist be given any
European model to copy, he will adopt its general
form, but he will exaggerate certain parts, and
multiply and disfigure the ornamental details, so
that the second or third copy will have dropped all
the Western characteristics and will have become
exclusively Hindu.

The fundamental characteristic of Hindu archi-
tecture a characteristic also found in Hindu litera-
ture, which for this reason is closely allied to Hindu
architecture is an overflowing exaggeration, an

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 117

infinite richness of detail, a complexity which is the
very antipodes of the correct and severe simplicity of
Grecian art. It is more especially in studying the arts
of India that it is understood to what an extent the
plastic works of a race are often allied to its mental
constitution, and constitute the clearest of languages
for those who know how to interpret them. If
the Hindus, like the Assyrians, had entirely dis-
appeared from history, the bas-reliefs of their
temples, their statues, their monuments would suffice
to reveal to us their past. What they would tell us
in particular is that the clear and methodic genius of
the Greeks had never been able to exercise the slightest
influence on the overflowing and unmethodical imagi-
nation of the Hindus. They would also make us
understand why Grecian influence in India could
never be other than transitory and was always
limited to the region in which it was momentarily
imposed by force.

The study from an archaeological point of view of
the monuments of India has enabled us to confirm by
precise documents what is revealed immediately by
a general knowledge of India and the Hindu genius.
It has enabled us to establish the curious fact that,
on several occasions, notably during the first two cen-

n8 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES :

turies of our era, the Hindu sovereigns in communi-
cation with the Arsacides dynasty of Persia, whose
civilisation bore a strong Grecian impress, desired to
introduce Grecian art into India, but never succeeded
in making it take root.

This borrowed and wholly official art, which bore
no relation to the thought of the people among whom
it had been introduced, always disappeared with the
political influences that had given birth to it. More-
over it was too antipathetic to the Hindu genius to
have exerted any influence on the national art even
during the period during which it was imposed by
force. No traces of Greek influence are found in the
contemporary or posterior Hindu monuments, in the
subterranean temples for example. On the other hand,
they would be far too easily discerned for it to be
possible to pass them over. Apart from the general
aspect which is always characteristic, there are tech-
nical details, the treatment of the draperies in par-
ticular, which at once reveal the hand of a Greek
artist.

The disappearance of Greek art in India was as
sudden as its apparition, and this very suddenness
shows how entirely it was an imported art, officially
imposed but without affinity with the people that

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 119

had been obliged to accept it. Arts never disappear
in this way from amongst a people ; they transform
themselves, and the new art always borrows some-
thing from that of which it has taken the place.
After suddenly appearing in India, Greek art as
suddenly disappeared without exerting any influence
whatever, exactly as has been the case with the
European monuments erected in the country by the
English during the past two centuries.

The fact that at the present day the European arts
exert no influence in India may be compared with
the exceeding slightness of the influence of the Greek
arts there eighteen centuries ago. It cannot be
denied that we have here a case of incompatibility
of aesthetic sentiments, for the Mussulman arts,
although quite as foreign to India as the European
arts, have been imitated throughout the peninsula.
Even in those parts of the country where the Mus-
sulmans have never exercised any power, it is rare to
come across a temple that does not contain some
traces of Arabian ornamentation. Doubtless, as in
the distant times of King Kanishka, we see rajahs
at the present day, such as the Rajah of Gwalior,
attracted by the might of the foreigners, build them-
selves European palaces in the Greco-Latin style,

i

120 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES:

but again as in the time of Kanishka this official
art, superposed on the indigenous art, is totally
without influence on the latter.

Greek and Hindu art, then, formerly existed side
by side, like European art and Hindu art at the
present day, but without ever influencing one
another. So far as the monuments of India properly
so called are concerned, there is not one of them
of which it can be said that it offers, either in its
general aspect or in its details, any resemblance
whatever, however remote, with a Greek monu-
ment.

This powerlessness of Grecian art to implant itself
in India is striking, and it must needs be attributed to
the incompatibility we have pointed out between the
soul of the two races, and not to a sort of incapacity
native to India to assimilate a foreign art, for the
country has shown itself perfectly able to assimilate
and transform the arts that corresponded to its
mental constitution.

The archaeological documents that we have been
able to collect show that Persia was the source from
which India derived its arts ; not the slightly
Hellenised Persia of the time of the Arsacides, but
the Persia that had inherited the old civilisations

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 121

of Egypt and Assyria. It is known that when
Alexander overthrew the dynasty of the Achae-
menides, 330 B.C., the Persians had already been in
possession for two centuries of a brilliant civilisation.
Doubtless they had not discovered the formula of
a new art, but the mixture of the arts of Egypt and
Assyria which they had inherited had produced
remarkable works. We can judge them by the still
existing ruins of Persepolis, which show us by their
Egyptian pylones, their Assyrian winged bulls, and
even some Grecian elements, that all the arts of the
great anterior civilisations had mingled their in-
fluences in this limited region of Asia.

India, then, borrowed its arts from Persia, but it
borrowed them in reality from the sources to which
Persia itself had gone, from Chaldaea and Egypt.

The study of the monuments of India reveals the
borrowings on which they lived originally, but to
establish these borrowings the most ancient monu-
ments must be examined, for the Hindu genius is
so specific, that the borrowed elements, in order to
adapt themselves to it, undergo such transformations
that they soon become unrecognisable.

Why is it that India, which has shown itself so
incapable of borrowing anything whatever from

122 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES:

Greece, has shown itself, on the contrary, so disposed
to borrow from Persia ? The reason evidently is
that the Persian arts corresponded to its mental
structure, whereas there was no such correspondence
in the case of the arts of Greece. The simple forms
and the sparely ornamented surfaces of the Grecian
monuments could not appeal to the Hindu genius,
which was attracted, on the contrary, by the com-
plicated forms, the exuberant decoration, and the
wealth of ornament of the Persian monuments.

Moreover, it is not solely at this distant epoch,
anterior to our era, that Persia, representing Egypt
and Assyria, exerted an influence on India by its
arts. When, many centuries later, the Mussulmans
appeared in the peninsula, their civilisation, during
its passage through Persia, had been deeply imbued
with Persian elements ; and it brought to India in
reality a Persian art still bearing traces of those old
Assyrian traditions which had been continued by
the dynasty of Achsemenides. The gigantic door-
ways of the mosques, and especially the enamelled
bricks with which the mosques are lined externally,
are vestiges of the Chaldseo-Assyrian civilisation.
India was able to assimilate these arts so well,
because they were in accordance with the genius of

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 123

its race ; whereas Greek art in the past and European
art at the present day, being utterly opposed to its
mode of thinking and feeling, have always remained
without influence on the national productions.

It is not, then, with Greece, as the archaeologists
still maintain, but with Egypt and Assyria through
the medium of Persia that India is linked. India
has borrowed nothing from Greece, but both have
gone to the same sources, to that common treasure,
the foundation of all civilisations, brought into being
in the course of centuries by the peoples of Egypt
and Chaldaea. The borrowings of Greece were
effected through the medium of the Phoenicians and
of the peoples of Asia Minor ; those of India through
the medium of Persia. The civilisations of Greece
and India hark back in this way to a common
source ; but the currents that issued from this source
in the two countries speedily took very different
directions, in harmony with the genius of either race.

If, however, as we have asserted, the art of a race
is in close correspondence with its mental constitu-
tion, and if for this reason the same art borrowed by
dissimilar races at once assumes very different forms,
we should expect to find that India, a country
inhabited by a great variety of races, is in posses-

124 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES :

sion of very different arts, and of styles of archi-
tecture that bear no resemblance to one another, in
spite of the identity of beliefs.

An examination of the monuments of the different
regions of India shows how entirely this is the case.
Indeed, the differences between the monuments are
so profound, that the only classification of the monu-
ments we have been able to make is based on regions,
that is on racial distinctions, and is quite independent
of the religion to which the peoples who have con-
structed them have belonged. There is no analogy
between the monuments of the north of India and
those of the south, constructed though they were at the
same period by peoples professing a similar religion.
Even during the Mussulman domination, at a period,
that is, when the political unity of India was most
complete, and the influence of the central authority
at its maximum, the purely Mussulman monuments
present profound differences according to the region
in which they are found. The mosques of Ahmeda-
bad, Lahore, Agra, or Bijapour, although devoted
to the same cult, offer but a very slight relationship,
a much slighter relationship than that which connects
a monument of the Renaissance with those of the
Gothic period.

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 125

It is not architecture only that varies in India
according to the race ; the statuary also varies with
the different regions, not merely as regards the types
represented, but especially in respect to the way in
which they are treated. If the bas-reliefs or the
statues of Sanchi be compared with those of Bharhut,
with which they are nevertheless contemporary, the
difference is already manifest. It is plainer still when
the statues and bas-reliefs of the province of Orissa
are compared with those of Bundelkund, or, again,
the statues of Mysore with those of the great pagodas
of the South of India. The influence of race is
everywhere apparent. It is seen, moreover, in the
most trifling artistic productions, which, as everybody
is aware, differ immensely in India from one region
to another. It is not necessary to be very expert to
distinguish between a coffer in carved wood of
Mysore workmanship and a coffer that hails from
the Guzrat district, or between a jewel from the
province of Orissa and a jewel from that of Bombay.

Doubtless the architecture of India, like all
Oriental architecture, is principally religious ; but
however great religious influence may be, especially
in the East, the influence of race is much more
considerable.

126 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES

This soul of the race, which guides the destinies of
peoples, determines as well their beliefs, institutions,
and arts ; whatever be the element of civilisation
under consideration, its action is always perceptible.
It is the only force against which no other force
can prevail. It represents the dead weight of
thousands of generations, the synthesis of their
thought.

BOOK III

THE HISTORY OF PEOPLES CONSIDERED AS A
CONSEQUENCE OF THEIR CHARACTER

BOOK III

THE HISTORY OF PEOPLES CONSIDERED AS A
CONSEQUENCE OF THEIR CHARACTER

CHAPTER I

HOW THE SOUL OF PEOPLES IS RESPONSIBLE FOR
THEIR INSTITUTIONS

The history of a people is always determined by its mental constitution
Various examples How the political institutions of France are
the outcome of the soul of the race Their real invariability beneath
their apparent variability Our most different political parties
pursue identical political ends under different names Their ideal
is always centralisation and the destruction of individual initiative
to the profit of the State How the French Revolution merely
executed the programme of the old monarchy Contrast between
the ideal of the Anglo-Saxon race and the Latin ideal The
initiative of the citizen substituted for the initiative of the State
Peoples' institutions are always the outcome of their character.

HISTORY in its main lines may be regarded as
the mere statement of the results engendered
by the psychological constitution of races. It is
determined by this constitution, just as the respira-

10 129

1 30 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES :

tory organs of fish are determined by their aquatic
life. In the absence of a preliminary knowledge of
the mental constitution of a people, its history appears
a chaos of events governed by hazard. On the
contrary, when we are acquainted with the soul of
a people, its life is seen to be the regular and inevit-
able consequence of its psychological characteristics.
In all the manifestations of the life of a people, we
always find the unchangeable soul of the race weaving
itself its own destiny.

It is more especially in political institutions that
the sovereign power of the soul of the race manifests
itself the most visibly. It will be easy for us to
prove this statement by a few examples.

Let us, to start with, take France, that is one of
the countries of the world which has been subjected
to the most profound upheavals, a country in which
in a few years the political institutions seem to have
changed most radically, in which the parties seem
the most divergent. If we consider from the psycho-
logical point of view these apparently so dissimilar
opinions, these perpetually struggling parties, we
note that they possess in reality a perfectly identical
common substratum which exactly represents the
ideal of our race. Intransigeants, Radicals, Monarch-

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 131

ists, Socialists, in a word all the champions of the
most diverse doctrines, pursue, though they give
themselves different names, an absolutely identical
end : the absorption of the individual by the State.
What they all of them desire with a like ardour is
the old centralised and Caesarian regime, the State
directing everything, ordaining everything, absorbing
everything, regulating the smallest details of the life
of the citizens, and thus freeing them from the
necessity of displaying the least glimmer of reflection
and initiative. Whether the authority placed at the
head of the State is called king, emperor, president,
etc., is of no importance ; this authority, whatever it
be, will perforce have the same ideal, and this ideal
is the same expression of the sentiments of the soul
of the race. 1 And the race would tolerate no other.

While, then, our extreme excitability, the extreme
ease with which we become discontented with our
surroundings, the idea that a new Government will
render our lot happier, lead us to be always changing
our institutions, the mighty voice of the dead which

1 " Such," writes a highly judicious observer, Dupont White, "is the
singular genius of France : the character of the people precludes its
succeeding in certain matters, either essential or desirable, which bear
on the ornamental or fundamental side of civilisation, unless it be
sustained or stimulated in the enterprise by its Government."

132 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES:

guides us condemns us to change but words and
appearances. The unconscious power of the soul of
our race is such that we do not even perceive the
illusion of which we are the victims.

Nothing assuredly, if only appearances be con-
sidered, is more different from the old regime than
the regime created by the Great Revolution. In
reality, however, the Revolution, though doubtless
unawares, did no more than continue the mon-
archical tradition, by completing the work of
centralisation begun by the monarchy centuries
previously. Were Louis XIII. and Louis XIV. to
rise from their tombs to judge the work of the
Revolution, they would doubtless blame some of the
acts of violence which accompanied its realisation,
but they would consider it to be in rigorous con-
formity with their tradition and their programme,
and they would allow that a minister entrusted with
the execution of this programme could not have
carried it out more successfully. They would declare
that the least revolutionary government France has
known was precisely that of the Revolution. They
would further note that none of the various regimes
that have succeeded one another in France for a
century past has attempted to tamper with this

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 133

work, so entirely is it the fruit of a regular evolu-
tion, the continuation of the monarchical ideal and
the expression of the genius of the race. Doubtless
these illustrious phantoms, in consequence of their
great experience, would offer some criticisms, would
perhaps remark, for example, that the substitution
of an administrative caste for the aristocratic govern-
ing caste has created in the State an impersonal
power that is more redoubtable than the old
nobility, since it is the sole power which, being un-
touched by political changes, is in possession of
traditions and of an esprit de corps^ while it is irre-
sponsible and perpetual conditions which necessarily
lead to its becoming the sole master. However,
they would not dwell, I fancy, to any great extent
on this objection, for they would be mindful of the
fact that the Latin peoples care very little for liberty,
but a great deal for equality, and put up with all
despotisms without difficulty provided they be im-
personal. Perhaps, too, they would consider excessive
and very tyrannical the innumerable regulations, the
thousand and one obligations which surround at the
present day the most insignificant acts of existence,
and they would perhaps observe that when the State
has absorbed everything, regulated everything, and

134 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPL

despoiled the citizens of all initiative, we shall find
ourselves spontaneously, and without any fresh
revolution, involved in out and out Socialism. But
at this stage of their reflection, die divine perspicacity
that enlightens kings, or, in its absence, the mathe-
matical principle that effects increase in geometrical
progression when their causes subsist, win allow
them to perceive that Socialism is nothing else than
the ultimate expression of the monarchial idea, of
which die Revolution was merely an accelerati ve phase.

Thus it is that, in the institutions of a people
meet both with those accidental circumstances referred
to in the beginning of this work, and those permanent
laws which we have attempted to determine. The
accidental circumstances give rise to the names and
appearances. The fundamental laws and the most
fundamental of them arise from the character of
peoples create the destiny of nations.

With the preceding example, we may contrast that
of another race, the English race, whose psycho-
logical constitution is very different from our own.
Merely in consequence of this : lonstitutions

are radically distinct from ours.

Whether the English have at their head a mom
as in England, or a president as in the Unite

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 135

their government will always present the same funda-
mental characteristics : the action of the State will
be reduced to a minimum and that of private
individuals carried to a maximum, a state of things
which is the precise contrary of the Latin ideal.
Harbours, canals, railways, educational establish-
ments, etc., will always be created and kept up by
the initiative of private individuals and never by that
of the State. 1 There are no revolutions, constitutions,
or despots that can give to a people which does not
possess them, or take from a people which does
possess them, the qualities of character of which its
institutions are the outcome. It has often been said
that peoples have the governments they deserve. Is
it conceivable that it should be otherwise ?

We shall soon show by other examples that a
people does not escape the consequences of its
mental constitution ; or that if it throws off this
influence it is only for a brief moment, as the sand
swept up by a storm seems for an instant to be
rebellious to the laws of attraction. It is a childish
chimera to believe that governments and constitu-

1 This preponderance of individual initiative should more especially
be observed in America. It has singularly decreased in the last twenty-
five years in England, where the encroachments of the State are
becoming more and more marked.

136 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES:

tions count for anything in the destinies of a people.
The destiny of a people lies in itself, and not in
exterior circumstances. All that can be asked of a
government is that it shall be the expression of the
sentiments and ideas of the people it is called on to
govern, and by the mere fact that it exists, it is
the image of the people. There are no governments
or constitutions of which it can be said that they
are absolutely good or absolutely bad. The govern-
ment of the King of Dahomey was probably an
excellent government for the people he was called
on to rule over, and the most ingenious European
constitution would have been inferior for his people.
This truth is unfortunately ignored by statesmen
who imagine that a mode of government can be
exported, and that colonies can be governed with
the institutions of a metropolis. It would be as
futile to wish to persuade fish to live in the air, under
the pretext that aerial respiration is practised by all
the superior animals.

By the mere fact of the diversity of their mental
constitution, different peoples cannot long exist under
an identical regime. The Irish and the English, the
Slav and the Hungarian, the Arab and the French-
man, are only maintained with the utmost difficulty

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 137

under the same laws and at the cost of incessant
revolutions. Great empires, embracing diverse peoples,
have always been condemned to an ephemeral
existence. When they have endured for some length
of time, as the Mongolian Empire did, or as that of
the English in India has done, it is on the one hand
because the races in contact were so numerous, so
different, and in consequence separated by such
rivalries that it was impossible that they should unite
against the foreigner ; and it was on the other hand
because these foreign masters have had a sufficiently
sure political instinct to respect the customs of the
conquered peoples and to allow them to live under
their own laws.

Many books would have to be written, indeed
history would have to be entirely recast and con-
sidered from quite a new standpoint, if it were
desired to show all the consequences of the psycho-
logical constitution of peoples. A close study of this
constitution ought to be the basis of politics and
education. It might even be said that this study
would avert many errors and many upheavals, if
peoples could escape the fatalities of their race, if the
voice of reason were not always extinguished by the
imperious voice of the dead.

CHAPTER II

APPLICATION OF THE PRECEDING PRINCIPLES TO
THE COMPARATIVE STUDY OF THE EVOLUTION
OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND
OF THE SPANISH-AMERICAN REPUBLICS

The English character How the American soul has been formed
Severity of the selection resulting from the conditions of existence
Forced disappearance of the inferior elements The negroes
and the Chinese Reasons of the prosperity of the United States
and of the decadence of the Spanish-American republics in spite of
identical political institutions Inevitable anarchy of the Spanish-
American republics as a consequence of the inferiority of the
characteristics of the race.

T

HE brief considerations which precede show
that the institutions of a people are the expres-
sion of its soul, and that while it is easy for a people
to change their form it is impossible for it to change
their essence. We are now going to show by very

precise examples to what a degree the soul of a

138

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES 139

people determines its destiny, and how insignificant
is the role played by institutions in this destiny. 1

I shall go for these examples to a country in which
there exist side by side, under conditions of environ-
ment but slightly different, two European races
equally civilised and intelligent, and only differing as
regards their character : I refer to America. This
continent is formed by two distinct continents united
by an isthmus. The superficies of each of these con-
tinents is very nearly equal, and their soil not at all
unlike. One of them has been conquered and peopled
by the English, the other by the Spanish race. These
two races live under similar republican institutions,
since the republics of South America have always
modelled their institutions on those of the United

1 The illustrious English sociologist, Herbert Spencer, had neglected
in his great works the influence of the character of peoples on their
destinies, and his admirable theoretical syntheses had led him at first to
very optimistic conclusions. Having decided as he became older to
take into consideration the fundamental role of character, he has had to
modify entirely his earlier conclusions, and has finally been brought to
substitute for them extremely pessimistic conclusions. We find them
expressed in a recently published discourse on Tyndall, reprinted in
the Revue des Revues. Here are some extracts :

"... My faith in free institutions, so strong to begin with, has con-
siderably diminished of late years. . . . We are going back to the
regime of the iron hand represented by the bureaucratic despotism of
a socialist organisation, and then by the military despotism which will
succeed it, supposing this latter not to be realised suddenly as the out-
come of some acute social crisis. "

140 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES:

States. In consequence, to explain the different
destinies of these peoples we have nothing to go on
but racial differences. Let us consider the results
these differences have produced.

To begin with, let us summarise in a few words the
characteristics of the Anglo-Saxon race which has
peopled the United States. There is no race, perhaps,
in the world which is so homogeneous, and whose
mental constitution it is so easy to define in its main
lines.

The dominant features of this mental constitution
from the point of view of character are : a degree of
will power which very few peoples, with the exception
perhaps of the Romans, have possessed, an indomit-
able energy, very great initiative, absolute self-
control, a sentiment of independence carried to the
pitch of excessive unsociability, immense activity, very
lively religious sentiments, a very stable morality, and
a very clear idea of duty.

From the intellectual point of view, it is impossible
to give special characteristics, that is to say to point
out special elements, not to be found in the other
civilised nations. There is little to note beyond a
sureness of judgment which allows of the grasping of
the practical and positive side of things and keeps

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 141

those who possess it from losing their way in
chimerical researches : a strong liking for facts and
but little taste for general ideas, a certain narrowness
of mind which prevents the recognition of the weak
sides of religious beliefs, and in consequence ensures
those beliefs escaping discussion.

To these general characteristics must be added a
complete optimism with regard to the path the indi-
vidual has traced himself in life, which leads him
never even to suppose that he could possibly have
chosen a better. He is always aware of what is
demanded of him by his country, his family, his Gods.
This optimism is carried to the pitch of regarding
whatever is foreign as extremely contemptible. Con-
tempt for the foreigner and his customs certainly
surpasses in England that formerly professed by the
Romans and Barbarians at the time of their greatness.
So great is it, that as regards the foreigner every rule
of morality ceases to hold good. There is not an
English statesmen who does not consider as perfectly
legitimate, in his conduct towards other peoples, acts
which would provoke the deepest and the most unani-
mous indignation if they were practised where his
countrymen were concerned. This contempt for the
foreigner is doubtless a sentiment of a very inferior

142 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES:

order from the philosophic point of view ; but from
the point of view of the prosperity of a people it is
extremely useful. As Lord Wolseley, the well-known
English general, has rightly remarked, it is one of the
sentiments that make the strength of England. It has
been said with reason, in connection with their refusal
their very judicious refusal be it remarked to
allow the construction of a tunnel under the Channel,
which would facilitate communications with the Conti-
nent, that the English take as much trouble as the
Chinese to prevent the penetration into their country
of all foreign influence.

All the characteristics which have just been enu-
merated are met with in the various social grades ; it
would be impossible to light on any element of
English civilisation on which they have not left their
mark. The foreigner who visits England, if only for
a few days, is at once struck by this fact. He will
note the desire for an independent life in the cottage
of the most humble employe, a confined dwelling, no
doubt, but in which the householder is exposed to no
restraint and is isolated from his neighbours ; in the
busiest railway stations in which the public is free to
circulate at all hours, not being penned in, like a flock
of docile sheep, behind a barrier guarded by an

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 143

employe, as if it were necessary to assure by force
the security of people, incapable themselves of the
amount of attention necessary to keep them from
being run over. He will recognise the energy of the
race in the laboriousness of the workman, or in that
of the schoolboy, left to himself while still quite
young, and learning to look after himself without
assistance, he being already well aware that in the
course of his existence nobody will be concerned
with his fate ; in the schoolmasters, who set compara-
tively little store on learning but attach great import-
ance to character, which they hold to be one of the
great motive forces of the world. 1 When he studies
the public life of the citizen, he will see that it is not
to the State but to private initiative that appeal is
always made, whether it is a case of repairing a
fountain or of constructing a harbour or a railway.
Pursuing his inquiry, he will soon recognise that this

1 Entrusted by the Queen of England with deciding the conditions
on which the annual prize given by her to Wellington College should
be awarded, Prince Albert ordered that it should be granted not to the
scholar who had done best in his studies, but to the boy of best character.
In the case of a Latin nation, the prize would certainly have been given
to the pupil who repeated best what he had learned from his books. All
our education, including what "we term higher education, consists in
making our youth recite lessons. The scholars retain the habit to such
a degree that they continue to recite them during the rest of their
existence.

144 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES:

people, in spite of defects which make it the most
insufferable of peoples in the eyes of foreigners, is the
only really free people, because it is the only people
which, having learned to govern itself, has been able
to leave only a minimum of action to its government.
If its history be studied, it is seen that it was the first
people to free itself from every kind of domination,
from that of the Church as well as from that of kings.
As early as the fifteenth century the legist Fortescue
contrasted " the Roman law, the inheritance of the
Latin peoples, with the English law : the one the
work of absolute sovereigns, and wholly inclined to
sacrifice the individual ; the other the work of the
will of the community, and ever ready to protect the
individual."

To whatever quarter of the globe such a people
may emigrate, it will at once acquire the preponder-
ance, and found powerful empires. If the race it
invades, as in the case of the Redskins of America,
for example, is sufficiently weak, and insufficiently
utilisable, it will be methodically exterminated. If
the race invaded, as in the case of the population of
India, is too numerous to be destroyed, and is capable
moreover of doing productive work, it will simply be
reduced to a very oppressive state of vassalage, and

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 145

obliged to labour for the almost exclusive advantage
of its masters.

It is more especially, however, in a new country
such as America, that the astonishing progress due to
the mental constitution of the English race should
be studied. Transported into uncultivated regions,
sparsely inhabited by some few savages, it is notorious
what its destiny has been. Scarcely a century has
been necessary to raise the country to the front rank
among the great powers of the world, and to-day
there are few powers that would be a match for it.
I advise those who are desirous of appreciating for
themselves the enormous sum of initiative and indi-
vidual energy expended by the citizens of the great
Republic to read the books of MM. Rousier and Paul
Bourget. The aptitude of the Americans to govern
themselves, to unite together to found great enter-
prises, to create towns, schools, harbours, railways,
etc., has arrived at such a pitch, and the action of the
State has been reduced to such a minimum, that it
might almost be said that no public authorities exist.
Apart from filling police duties and those of diplo-
matic representation, it is even difficult to see what
purpose they could serve.

It is impossible, moreover, for an individual to
u

146 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES :

prosper in the United States except on the condition
that he possesses the qualities of character I have just
described, and this is why the foreign immigrations
are powerless to modify the general trend of mind of
the race. The conditions of existence are such that
the individuals who do not possess these qualities are
condemned to disappear at an early date. Only the
Anglo-Saxon can live in this atmosphere saturated
with independence and energy. The Italian dies of
starvation, and the Irishman and the negro vegetate
in the most humble situations.

The great Republic is assuredly the land of liberty ;
it is assuredly the land neither of equality nor of
fraternity, those two Latin chimeras which the laws
of progress do not recognise. In no country on the
globe has natural selection made its iron arm more
rudely felt. It is unpitying ; but it is precisely
because it ignores pity that the race it has con-
tributed to form retains its power and energy.
There is no room for the weak, the mediocre, the
incapable on the soil of the United States. By the
mere fact that they are inferior, isolated individuals
or entire races are destined to perish. The Redskin
Indians, because useless, have been shot down, or
condemned to die of hunger. The Chinese workmen,

JTS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 147

whose labour constitutes a vexatious source of com-
petition, will soon undergo a similar fate. The law
decreeing their total expulsion has not been carried
out because of the enormous expenses its application
would entail. 1 Its place will doubtless soon be taken
by a methodical destruction, already begun in several
mining districts. Other laws have recently been
voted, forbidding pauper emigrants to land on
American territory. As to the negroes who served
as the pretext for the War of Succession a war
between those who possessed slaves, and those who,
being unable to possess them, did not wish to allow
others to own them they are almost tolerated
because they fill none but subordinate positions
which no American citizen would consent to accept.
Theoretically they have rights ; practically they are
treated like semi- useful animals, who are got rid of
as soon as they become dangerous. The summary
proceedings of Lynch-law are universally recog-
nised to meet their case. At their first crime
of any gravity they are shot or hanged. Statistics,

1 The Fifty-third Congress only adjourned the execution of the Geary
law (Chinese Exclusion Act) because it found that to convey a hundred
thousand Chinamen back to their country would involve an expenditure
of thirty millions of francs, whereas the sum voted for the expulsion of
the Chinese workmen was only one hundred thousand francs,

148 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES :

which only include a portion of these execu-
tions, give over a thousand for the last seven
years.

These are doubtless the gloomy sides of the picture.
It is brilliant enough to support them. If it were
required to define in a word the difference between
Continental Europe and the United States, it might
be said that the first represents the maximum of what
can result from official regulation replacing individual
initiative ; the second, the maximum of what can be
effected by individual initiative entirely freed from all
official regulation. These fundamental differences are
exclusively the consequences of character. It is not
on the soil of the rude Republic that European
Socialism has a chance of implanting itself. The
ultimate expression of State tyranny, it can only
prosper among old races, subjected for centuries to a
regime which has deprived them of all capacity for
self-government. 1

We have just seen what has been accomplished in

1 The America I have just described is the America of yesterday and
to-day, but it doubtless will not be that of to-morrow. We shall see in
a forthcoming chapter that the country is threatened, in consequence of
its recent invasion by an immense number of inferior and unassimilable
elements, by a gigantic civil war, which may be followed by its
division into several independent States, always fighting amongst
themselves as are those of Europe.

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 149

one portion of America by a race possessing a mental
constitution of which the dominant features are per-
severance, energy, and strength of will. It remains
for us to show what has become of an almost similar
country in the hands of another race, which, though
highly intelligent, possesses none of the qualities of
character whose effects I have just noted.

South America, as regards its natural productions,
is one of the richest countries of the globe. Twice as
large as Europe, and ten times less inhabited, there is
no lack of land which is, so to speak, at the disposition
of everybody. The dominant population, which is of
Spanish origin, is divided into numerous republics :
the republics of Argentina, Brazil, Chili, Peru, etc.
All of them have adopted the political constitution of
the United States, and live in consequence under
identical laws. And yet, by the mere fact that the
race is different and lacks the fundamental qualities
possessed by the people of the United States, all these
republics, without a single exception, are perpetually
a prey to the most sanguinary anarchy, and in spite
of the astonishing richness of their soil they are
victims one after the other of every sort of political
and economic disaster, of bankruptcy and despotism.

To appreciate the lengths reached by the decadence

150 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES:

of the Spanish-American republics, the remarkable
and impartial work on the subject of Th. Child
must be read. The causes of this decadence lie
entirely in the mental constitution of a race possessing
neither energy, strength of will, nor morality. The
absence of morality, in particular, surpasses all we
know that is worst in Europe. Citing one of the
most important towns, Buenos Ayres, the author
declares it to be uninhabitable by anybody of any
delicacy of conscience or morality. In reference to
one of the least degraded of the republics, the
Argentine Republic, the same writer adds : " If this
republic be studied from the commercial point of
view, one is dumbfounded by the blatant immorality
that is to be met with in every direction."

As to the institutions, there is no better example of
how wholly they are the offspring of the race, and
of the impossibility of transplanting them from one
people to another. It was of great interest to know
what would happen to the very liberal institutions of
the United States after their introduction among an
inferior race. " These countries," M. Child informs
us of the various Spanish-American republics, " are
under the ferule of Presidents who exercise an
autocracy not less absolute than that of the Tzar of

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 151

all the Russias ; more absolute, indeed, for they have
nothing to fear from the importunities and the
influence of European censure. The Government
officials are solely recruited from amongst their
creatures ; . . . the citizens vote as they choose, but
no account is paid to their votes. The Argentine
Republic is a republic in name only ; in reality it is
an oligarchy in the hands of persons who make a
commerce of politics."

Only one country, Brazil, had to some extent
escaped this decadence, thanks to a monarchical
regime which kept the central authority from being
the object of individual rivalries. This constitution,
too liberal for races without energy and without will,
has ended by succumbing. The result is that the
country is a prey to utter anarchy. In the lapse of a
few years, the dilapidation of the public finances by
those in power has been such that the taxes have
had to be increased by over sixty per cent.

Naturally, it is not in politics only that the
decadence is manifest of the Latin race by which
South America is peopled, but in all the other
elements of civilisation as well. Left to themselves,
these hapless republicans would revert to pure
barbarism. All their industry and commerce is in

152 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES

the hands of foreigners, of Englishmen, Americans, and
Germans. Valparaiso has become an English city;
and nothing would remain of Chili if the foreign
element were to disappear. It is thanks to the
foreigner that these countries still retain that external
varnish of civilisation that still deceives Europe. The
Argentine Republic counts four millions of whites of
Spanish origin ; I doubt whether a single white man,
apart from foreigners, could be cited at the head of an
important industry.

This terrible decadence of the Latin race, left to
itself, compared with the prosperity of the English
race in a neighbouring country, is one of the most
sombre, the saddest, and, at the same time, the most
instructive experiences that can be cited in support of
the psychological laws that I have enunciated.

CHAPTER III

HOW THE MODIFICATION OF THE SOUL OF RACES
AFFECTS THE HISTORICAL EVOLUTION OF
PEOPLES

The influence of foreign elements at once transforms the soul of a race,
and in consequence its civilisation Example of the Romans
Roman civilisation was not destroyed by military invasions, but
by the pacific invasions of the Barbarians The Barbarians never
formed the project of destroying the Empire Their invasions were
not of the nature of conquests The early Frank chiefs always con-
sidered themselves to be functionaries of the Roman Empire They
always respected Roman civilisation, and their aim was to continue
it It was only from the seventh century onwards that the Gallic
barbarian chiefs ceased to consider the Emperor as their superior
The complete transformation of Roman civilisation was not the
consequence of a work of destruction, but of the adoption of an
ancient civilisation by a new race The modern invasions of the
United States The civil strife and the breaking up of the United
States into independent and rival States to which these invasions
will lead The invasion of France by foreigners and their con-
sequences.

THE examples we have cited show that the
history of a people does not depend on its

institutions, but on its character that is to say, on its

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154 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES:

race. We further saw, when studying the formation
of historical races, that their dissolution is the result
of cross-breeding, and that the peoples which have
preserved their unity and force the Aryans, for
example, in India in the past, and in modern times
the English in their various colonies are those who
have always carefully avoided intermarrying with
foreigners. The presence in the midst of a people of
foreigners, even in small numbers, is sufficient to
affect its soul, since it causes it to lose its capacity for
defending the characteristics of its race, the monu-
ments of its history, and the achievements of its
ancestors.

This conclusion arises out of all of what precedes.
If the various elements of a civilisation are to be
regarded as the exterior manifestation of the soul of
a people, it is evident that as soon as the soul of the
people changes, its civilisation should change as well.

The history of the past supplies us with incon-
trovertible proof that this is what indeed occurs, and
the history of the future will furnish many other such
proofs.

The progressive transformation of Roman civilisa-
tion is one of the most striking examples it is possible
to invoke. Historians usually picture this event as

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 155

the result of the destructive invasions of the Bar-
barians ; but a more attentive study of the facts
shows, on the one hand, that it was pacific and not
warlike invasions which brought about the fall of the
Empire ; and, on the other hand, that the Barbarians,
far from having wished to overthrow Roman civili-
sation, devoted all their efforts towards adopting and
continuing institutions of which they were the re-
spectful admirers. They essayed to appropriate the
language, the institutions and the arts of Rome.
Down to the time of the last of the Merovingians,
they endeavoured to continue the great civilisation
of which they were the heirs. This guiding intention
is reflected in all the acts of the great Emperor
Charlemagne.

We know, however, that such a task has always
been impossible. The Barbarians needed several
centuries before they could form, by repeated crosses
and identical conditions of existence, a race in any
way homogeneous ; and when this race was formed it
possessed, merely in virtue of the fact of its creation,
a new language and new institutions, and in con-
sequence a new civilisation. The mighty traditions of
Rome left their impress deeply marked on this
civilisation, but the various efforts to revive the

156 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES:

civilisation of Rome itself have always been vain.
The Renaissance endeavoured in vain to revive its
arts, and the Revolution to bring back its institutions.

The Barbarians who successively invaded the
Empire from the first century onwards, and who in
the end absorbed it, never proposed to destroy but,
on the contrary, to continue its civilisation. Had
they never waged war on Rome, had they confined
themselves to mixing with the Romans in ever
increasing numbers, the course of history would not
have been changed ; they would not have destroyed
the Empire, but their mere mingling with the Roman
people would have sufficed to destroy its soul. It
may be said, then, that the Roman civilisation has
never been overthrown, but has simply been con-
tinued, transforming itself in the course of ages by
the mere fact of its having fallen into the hands of
different races.

A glance at the history of the barbarian invasions
is amply sufficient to justify what precedes.

The labours of modern scholars, and particularly
those of Fustel de Coulanges, have clearly shown
that it was the pacific and not the aggressive
invasions of the Barbarians the aggressive invasions
were easily repulsed by Barbarians in the pay of the

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 157

empire that brought about the progressive dis-
appearance of the might of Rome. As early as the
times of the first emperors the custom had been
introduced of employing Barbarians in the army. It
gained ground in proportion as the Romans became
richer and more refractory to military service, till,
after the lapse of several centuries, there were none
but foreigners in the army as in the administration :
" The Visigoths, the Burgundians, the Franks were
federate soldiers in the service of the Roman Empire."
When Rome came to have none but Barbarians in
its service, and when its provinces were governed by
barbarian chiefs, it was evident that these chiefs
would render themselves progressively more and
more independent. They were, indeed, successful
in this effort, but such was the prestige of Rome, that
it never occurred to any of them to overthrow the
empire, even when Rome fell into their power.
When one of these chiefs, Odoacre, king of the
Heruti, in the pay of the empire, possessed himself
of Rome in 476, he hastened to ask the emperor,
whose residence at this time was Constantinople, for
his authorisation to govern Italy with the title of
Patrician. None of the other chiefs behaved differ-
ently. It was always in the name of Rome that they

158 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES:

governed their provinces. It never occurred to them
to dispose of the soil or to tamper with the institutions.
Clovis regarded himself as a Roman functionary, and
was very proud when he obtained the title of consul
from the emperor. Thirty years after his death, his
successors still accepted the laws promulgated by the
emperors, and considered themselves bound to see
that they were observed. The beginning of the
seventh century must be reached before the barbarian
chiefs of Gaul are found to venture on issuing money
bearing their own effigy. Until then their coins had
always borne the effigy of the emperors. It is only
from this period onwards that it can be said that the
Gallic population ceased to regard the emperor as
their chief. In fact, the historians make the history
of France begin two hundred years too soon and
accord us some ten kings too many.

Nothing less resembles a conquest than the bar-
barian invasions, since the populations retained their
lands, their language, and their laws, which is never
the case in connection with true conquests, such as
that, for example, of England by the Normans.

It is probable that the disappearance of the
authority of Rome was so gradual, that it took place
unperceived by the people of the period. The

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 159

provinces had been accustomed for centuries to be
governed by chiefs acting in the name of the
emperors. Very gradually and very slowly their
chiefs came to govern on their own account. Nothing
in consequence was changed. The same regime
continued under new masters throughout the Merov-
ingian period. 1

The only real change, and it ended by becoming a
very profound change, was the formation of a new
historic race, involving as a necessary consequence
according to the laws we have set forth the birth of
a new civilisation.

In virtue of that eternal repetition of the same
phenomena, which seems the most fixed of the laws
of history, we are probably destined to witness in
contemporary history pacific invasions analogous to
those which brought about the transformation of
Roman civilisation. In view of the general exten-
sion of modern civilisation, it may seem that nowa-
days there are no longer any barbarians, or at any
rate that these barbarians, relegated to the depths of
Asia and Africa, are too far from us to be very

1 " The Merovingian government," declares M. Fustel de Coulanges,
" was in the main a continuation of that which the Roman Empire had
given Gaul. . . . There was nothing feudal about the government of
the Merovingians,"

160 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES:

redoubtable. Assuredly we have not to fear being
invaded by them ; and if they are to be dreaded it
will only be, as I have shown in another work,
because the time may come when they will enter into
economic rivalry with Europe. It is not with them
in consequence that we are concerned here, but
though the Barbarians may seem to be very distant,
they are in reality very close, far closer than at the
time of the Roman emperors. The fact is that they
exist in the very bosom of civilised nations. In
consequence of the complication of our modern
civilisation, and of that progressive differentiation of
individuals to which I have referred, each people
contains an immense number of inferior elements
incapable of adapting themselves to a civilisation
that is too superior for them. There results an
enormous waste population, and the peoples who
come to be invaded by it will have reason to dread
the experience.

At the present day it is towards the United States
of America that these new barbarians direct their
steps with a common accord, and it is by them that the
civilisation of this great nation is seriously threatened.
So long as the foreign immigration was on a small
scale, and composed in the main of English elements,

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 161

its absorption was easy and useful. It has brought
about the astonishing greatness of America. The
United States are now exposed to a gigantic invasion
of inferior elements which they neither wish nor are
able to assimilate. Between 1880 and 1890 they
received nearly six millions of emigrants, almost
exclusively composed of workmen of a low class and
of every nationality. To-day of the 1,100,000 in-
habitants of Chicago not a quarter are Americans.
The population includes 400,000 Germans, 220,000
Irish, 50,000 Poles, 55,000 Czechs, etc. There is no
fusion between these immigrants and the Americans.
They do not even take the trouble to learn the
language of their new country, in which they form
mere colonies engaged in badly paid occupations.
They are discontented and in consequence dangerous.
During the recent railway strike Chicago narrowly
escaped being burned down by them, and it was
necessary to fire on them pitilessly. It is solely
among their ranks that are recruited the adepts of
that barbarous and levelling socialism, which is
perhaps realisable in decadent Europe, but is quite
antipathetic to the character of true Americans. The
conflicts which socialism is about to engender on the
soil of the great Republic will be, in reality, conflicts

12

162 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES:

between races which have reached different levels of
evolution.

It seems evident that in the civil war that is
preparing between the America of the Americans
and the America of the foreigners, the triumph will
not rest with the barbarians. This gigantic struggle
will doubtless end in a hecatomb reproducing on an
immense scale the complete extermination of the
Cimbrians by Marius. If the struggle is at all
delayed and the invasion continues, it will become
impossible that the solution should be total destruc-
tion. In that case the destiny of the United States
will probably be that of the Roman Empire that is to
say, the breaking up of the existing provinces of the
republic into independent states, as divided and as
frequently at war as those of Europe or as those of
Spanish America.

America is not the only country threatened by
these invasions. There is one State in Europe,
France, which is menaced in the same way. It is a
rich country, whose population does not increase,
surrounded by poor countries whose population is
constantly increasing. The immigration of these
neighbours is inevitable, and the more so as it is
rendered necessary by the growing exigencies of our

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 163

working classes, taken in connection with the needs
of agriculture and industry. The advantages these
immigrants find on our soil are evident. They are
freed from the obligation of military service, being
foreign nomads they have few or no taxes to pay,
and the work is easier and better paid than in their
native territory. Further, they invade our country,
not merely because of its riches, but because the
majority of other countries are always passing laws
forbidding their entrance.

This invasion of foreigners is the more redoubtable,
in that it is naturally the most inferior elements,
those that cannot succeed in making a livelihood in
their own country, that emigrate. Our humanitarian
principles condemn us to undergo an ever increasing
foreign invasion. Forty years ago there were only
400,000 such foreign immigrants ; to-day they number
over 1,200,000, and they are always flocking in
in increasing hordes. Considered merely in respect to
the number of Italians it contains, Marseilles might
be called an Italian colony. Italy does not possess a
single colony that contains a like number of Italians.
If the present conditions do not change, if, that is to
say, these invasions do not stop, but a very short
time will have to elapse before a third of the popula-

164 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES

tion of France has become German and a third
Italian. What can become of the unity, or even of
the existence of a people under such conditions?
The worst disasters on the battlefield would be
infinitely less grave than such invasions. 1 It was a
very sure instinct that taught the ancient peoples to
dread foreigners ; they were well aware that the situa-
tion of a country is judged not by the number of its
inhabitants, but by that of its citizens.

Once more we find that at the bottom of all
historical and social questions lies the inevitable
racial problem. It dominates all the others.

1 These invasions being the consequence of certain economical
phenomena it is impossible to control, they cannot be prevented. Still,
certain measures might be taken which would at least check them :
obligatory military service in the Foreign Legion for all foreigners less
than twenty-five years of age and counting two years' residence ; military
tax on the older immigrants ; almost entire suppression of naturalisa-
tion ; tax amounting to a quarter of the income or salary on all
foreigners established in France for less than fifty years. The Deputy
who should cause such a law to be voted would be worthy of a statue
erected by his grateful country.

BOOK IV

HOW THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CHARACTERISTICS
OF RACES ARE MODIFIED

BOOK IV

HOW THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CHARACTERISTICS
OF RACES ARE MODIFIED

CHAPTER I

THE ROLE OF IDEAS IN THE LIFE OF PEOPLES

The leading ideas of each civilisation are always very few in number
Extreme slowness of their birth and disappearance Ideas do not
influence conduct until they have been transformed into sentiments
They then form part of the character It is thanks to the slow-
ness of the evolution of ideas that civilisations possess a certain
fixity How ideas take root The reason has no influence what-
ever The influence of affirmation and prestige The role of
enthusiasts and apostles Deformation undergone by ideas as
they penetrate the masses A universally admitted idea soon
influences all the elements of civilisation It is thanks to their
community of ideas that the men of each age have a sum total of
average conceptions which makes them very much alike in their
thoughts and actions The yoke of custom and opinion It is not
relaxed until the critical ages of history when the old ideas are
losing their influence and have not as yet been replaced This
critical age is the only age in which the discussion of opinions can
be tolerated Dogmas only hold their own on the condition that
they are not discussed Peoples cannot change their ideas and
dogmas without being at once obliged to change their civilisation.

AFTER having shown that the psychological
characteristics of races possess great fixity, and

that the history of peoples is the consequence of

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168 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES:

these characteristics, we added that it was possible
for the psychological elements, as it is for the
anatomical elements of species, to be transformed in
the long run by slow hereditary accumulations. The
evolution of civilisations depends in a large measure
on these transformations.

Various factors are capable of provoking psycho-
logical changes. Wants, the struggle for life, the
action of certain surroundings, the progress of the
sciences and of industry, education, beliefs, and
many other factors exert an influence. We have
already devoted a volume x to the study of each of
them. It is impossible to treat the matter in detail
here. We merely return to it with a view to show-
ing, by the choice of a few essential factors, the
mechanism of their action. It is to this study that
will be devoted the present and following chapters.

The study of the various civilisations that have
succeeded one another since the origin of the world
proves that they have always been guided in their
development by a very small number of fundamental
ideas. If the history of peoples were confined to
that of their ideas it would never be very long. When
a civilisation has succeeded in creating in a century

1 Ilhomme et les socictes. Leurs origines et leur histoire, vol. ii.

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 169

one or two fundamental ideas in the domain of the
arts, the sciences, literature or philosophy, it may be
considered that it has been exceptionally brilliant.

Ideas can have no real action on the soul of
peoples until, as the consequence of a very slow
elaboration, they have descended from the mobile
regions of thought to that stable and unconscious
region of the sentiments in which the motives of our
actions are elaborated. They then become elements
of character and may influence conduct. Character
is formed in part of a stratification of unconscious
ideas.

When ideas have undergone this slow elaboration
their power is considerable, because reason ceases to
have any hold on them. The enthusiast who is
dominated by an idea, religious or other, is in-
accessible to reasoning, however intelligent he may
be. -All he will be able to attempt, and most often
he will not make the effort, will be to try, by artifices
of thought and deformations often very great, to
bring any idea that seems to contradict the con-
ceptions which dominate him, into some sort of
agreement with them.

If ideas can only exert an action after having slowly
descended from the regions of the conscious to those

170 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES:

of the unconscious, it is understandable that they will
be very slowly transformed, and that the leading ideas
of a civilisation should be very few in number, and
require so long a period for their evolution. We
ought to congratulate ourselves that such is the
case ; were it not so it would be impossible that
civilisations should have any fixity. It is equally
fortunate that new ideas can implant themselves in
the long run, for if the old ideas were absolutely
unchangeable, civilisations would be unable to realise
any progress. Thanks to the slowness of our mental
transformations many generations of men are needed
to secure the triumph of new ideas, and many other
generations to bring about their disappearance. The
most civilised peoples are those whose leading ideas
have been able to maintain an equal distance between
variability and fixity. History is strewn with the
debris of the peoples who have been unable to
maintain this equilibrium.

It is easy, in consequence, to understand how it is
that what is most striking when the history of the
various peoples is studied, is not the wealth and novelty
of their ideas, but, on the contrary, the extreme poverty
of these ideas, the slowness of their transformations,
and the power they exert. Civilisations are the

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 171

result of some few fundamental ideas, and when
these ideas change, the civilisations are at once com-
pelled to change as well. The Middle Ages existed
on two principal ideas : the religious idea and the
feudal idea. Its arts, its literature, and its entire
conception of life are derived from these ideas. At
the time of the Renaissance these ideas undergo
some modification ; the rediscovered ideal of the old
Greco-Latin world implants itself in Europe, and at
once the conception of life, the arts and literature
begin to be transformed. Then the authority of
tradition is shaken, scientific truths substitute them-
selves gradually for revealed truth, and civilisation is
once against transformed. At the present day the
old religious ideas seem definitely to have lost the
greater part of their empire, and owing to this fact all
the social institutions that were based on them are
threatened with destruction.

The history of the genesis of ideas, of their domi-
nation, of their transformations, and of their disappear-
ance, can only be written on the principle of citing
numerous examples in illustration. Could we enter
into details, we would show that each element of
civilisation philosophy, beliefs, arts, literature, etc.
is subject to a very small number of leading ideas

172 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES:

whose evolution is exceedingly slow. The sciences
themselves do not escape this law. The whole of
modern physics is derived from the idea of the
indestructibility of force, the whole of biology from
the idea of evolution, the whole of medicine from the
idea of the action of the infinitely small; and the
history of these ideas shows that, although the
persons called upon to appreciate them belong to
the most enlightened classes, they only establish
themselves little by little and with difficulty. In a
century in which everything proceeds with such
rapidity, and in a field of investigation in which
passions and interests have little play, the implanting
of a fundamental scientific idea requires not less than
twenty-five years. The clearest ideas, those most
easily demonstrable, those which should have aroused
the least controversy, were just as long in finding
acceptance.

Whatever the nature of the idea, whether it be a
scientific, artistic, philosophic, or religious idea, the
mechanism of its propagation is always identical.
It has to be adopted at first by a small number of
apostles, the intensity of whose faith and the
authority of whose names give great prestige. They
then act much more by suggestion than by demon-

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 173

stration. The essential elements of the mechanism
of persuasion must not be sought for in the value of
a demonstration. Ideas can be enforced either by the
prestige of the promulgator or by an appeal to the
passions, but no influence is exerted by appealing
solely to the reason. The masses never let them-
selves be persuaded by demonstrations, but merely by
affirmations, and the authority of "these affirmations
depends solely on the prestige exerted by the
person who enunciates them.

When these apostles have succeeded in convincing
a small circle of adepts and have thus formed new
apostles, the new idea begins to enter the domain of
discussion. It arouses at first universal opposition,
because it necessarily clashes with much that is old
and established. The apostles who defend it are
naturally excited by this opposition, which merely
convinces them of their superiority over the rest of
mankind, and they defend the new idea energetically,
not because it is true most often they know nothing
about its truth or falsehood but simply because they
have adopted it. The new idea is now more and more
discussejd ; that is to say, in reality it is entirely accepted
by the one side, and entirely rejected by the other side.
Affirmations and negations but very few arguments,

174 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES:

are exchanged, the sole motives for the acceptance or
rejection of an idea being inevitably, for the immense
majority of brains, mere sentimental motives, in which
reasoning cannot have any part.

Thanks to these always impassioned debates, the
idea progresses slowly. The new generations who
find it controverted tend to adopt it merely because
it is controverted. For young persons, always
eager to be independent, wholesale opposition to
received ideas is the most accessible form of
originality.

The idea continues then to gain ground, and before
long it has no longer any need of support. It will
now spread everywhere by the mere effect of imita-
tion, acting as a contagion, a faculty with which men
are generally endowed in as high a degree as are the
big anthropoid apes, which modern science assigns
to men as their forefathers.

As soon as the mechanism of contagion intervenes,
the idea enters on the phase which necessarily means
success. It is soon accepted by opinion. It then
acquires a penetrating and subtle force which spreads
it progressively among all intellects, creating simul-
taneously a sort of special atmosphere, a general
manner of thinking. Like the fine dust of the high-

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 175

way which penetrates everywhere, it finds its way
into all the conceptions and all the productions of an
epoch. The idea and its consequences then form part
of that compact stock of hereditary commonplaces
imposed on us by education. The idea has triumphed
and has entered the domain of sentiment where for
long it will have nothing to fear.

Of the various ideas which guide a civilisation,
some, those relating to the arts or philosophy for
example, rest confined to the upper grades of the
nation ; others, particularly those relating to religious
conceptions and politics, go deep down in some
instances among the crowd. They arrive there in
general much deformed, but when they arrive there
the power they exert over primitive minds incapable
of reasoning is immense. The idea under these con-
ditions represents something that is invincible, and
its efforts are propagated with the violence of a
torrent that has overflown its banks. It is always
easy to find among a people a hundred thousand
men ready to risk their lives to defend an idea as
soon as this idea has subjugated them. Then it is
that supervene those great events which revolutionise
history, and which only crowds are capable of accom-
plishing. It is not men of letters, artists, or philo-

176 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES:

sophers who established the religions which have
ruled the world, or the vast empires which have
stretched from one hemisphere to another, or who
have been the causes of the great religious and
political revolutions which have changed the face of
Europe. These achievements have been the work of
the illiterate sufficiently dominated by an idea to
sacrifice their lives to its propagation. With nothing
else to rely on but this theoretically very insignificant
though practically very effective outfit, the nomads of
the deserts of Arabia conquered a portion of the old
Greco-Roman world and founded one of the most
giganic empires known to history. It was with a
similar moral outfit the domination of an idea
that the heroic soldiers of the Convention were
victorious against the onslaughts of Europe up in
arms.

A strong conviction is so irresistible that only a
conviction of equal strength has any chance of
resisting it victoriously. Faith is the only serious
enemy faith has to fear. It is sure to triumph where
the material force opposed to it is in the service of
weak sentiments and enfeebled beliefs. If, however,
it finds itself confronted by a faith of equal intensity,
the struggle becomes very severe, and success under

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 177

these conditions is determined by accessory circum-
stances, most often of a moral order, by the spirit of
discipline or the better organisation. A close study
of the history of the Arabs, just referred to, shows
that on the occasion of their earlier conquests and
these conquests are always the most difficult and the
most important they encountered adversaries who
were morally weak, although their military organisa-
tion was fairly good. Syria was the first country
they invaded. All they met there was Byzantine
armies composed of mercenaries, but little disposed
to sacrifice themselves for any cause whatever.
Animated by an intense faith which increased their
strength tenfold, they dispersed these troops who
lacked an ideal as easily as before their time a
handful of Greeks, sustained by love of their city,
had dispersed the innumerable soldiers of Xerxes.
The upshot of their enterprise would have been quite
different if they had come into collision a few
centuries earlier with the Roman cohorts. It is
evident that when equally powerful moral forces are
pitted against one another, victory rests with the
side that is best organised. The faith of the Vendeans
was assuredly most ardent, they were most energeti-
cally convinced ; but the convictions of the soldiers

13

178 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES:

of the Convention were also very strong, and as their
military organisation was the better, they gained the
day.

In religion, as in politics, success always goes to
those who believe, never to those who are sceptical,
and if at the present day it would seem as if the
future belongs to the Socialists, in spite of the
dangerous absurdity of their dogmas, the reason is
that they are now the only party possessing real
convictions. The modern governing classes have
lost faith in everything. They no longer believe in
anything, not even in the possibility of defending
themselves against the threatening flood of barbarians,
by which they are surrounded on all sides.

When an idea, after a longer or shorter period of
tentative existence, modifications, deformations, dis-
cussion and propaganda, has acquired its definite form
and penetrated the soul of the masses, it constitutes a
dogma, that is one of those absolute truths which are
no longer discussed. It then forms part of those
general beliefs on which the existence of peoples is
based. Its universal character allows it to play a
preponderating role. The great epochs of history,
the century of Augustus or that of Louis XIV., have
been those in which ideas, leaving their tentative

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 179

period and getting beyond discussion, have taken
fixed shape and become the sovereign masters of the
thought of men. They then become brilliant beacons,
and everything they illumine assumes a similar hue.

As soon as a new idea has triumphed, it leaves its
mark on all the elements of civilisation, including the
least important ; but in order that it shall produce its
full effect it is necessary that it should have pene-
trated the soul of the masses. From the intellectual
heights on which it came into being, it descends from
grade to grade, undergoing on the way incessant
alterations and modifications until it has taken a
shape in which it is accessible to the popular soul
that is to secure its triumph. At this point it is
met with concentrated in a very few words, some-
times in a single word, but this word evokes powerful
images, either seductive or terrible, but always on
this account impressive. Examples are the words
Paradise and Hell in the Middle Ages, brief syllables
which have the magic power of corresponding with
everything, and for simple souls of explaining every-
thing. The word Socialism represents for the modern
working man one of those magical and synthetic
formulae capable of exerting an empire over souls.
It evokes images which vary with the masses which it

i8o THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES:

penetrates, but which are powerful in spite of their
rudimentary forms.

For the French theoretician the word Socialism
evokes the image of a sort of Paradise, in which men,
become equal, will enjoy ideal felicity under the
incessant direction of the State. For the German
working man the image evoked presents itself under
the guise of a smoky tavern in which the Government
will serve gratuitously to every comer gigantic
pyramids of sausages and sauerkraut and unlimited
pots of beer. None among those who dream either
of sauerkraut or of equality have ever of course been
at pains to find out the sum total of what there is
to be divided or the number of those who are there to
share it. The essential characteristic of an idea of
this kind is that it assumes an absolute shape that
raises it above all objection.

When the idea has come to transform itself little
by little into a sentiment, and has become a dogma,
its triumph is assured for a long time, and all attempts
to shake it by reasoning will be vain. Doubtless in
the end the new idea will undergo the fate of the
idea whose place it has taken. It will grow old and
decline ; but before it is completely used up it will
have to undergo an entire series of retrograde trans-

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 181

formations, of deformations of every kind, which will
demand several generations for their accomplishment.
Before dying out entirely, it will for long form part of
those old hereditary ideas which we style prejudices,
but which we nevertheless respect. An old idea, even
though it has become a mere word, a sound, a
mirage, possesses a magical power by which we are
still subjugated.

In this way is kept up that old inheritance of
antiquated ideas, opinions, and conventions which we
accept without demur, though they would offer but
little resistance to an effort of the reason, if we would
consent for an instant to discuss them. But how many
men are capable of discussing their own opinions,
and how many of these opinions would hold water
after the most superficial examination ?

It is better that the redoubtable examination
should not be attempted. Happily there is little risk
of our undertaking it. The critical spirit constituting
a higher faculty that is very rare, whereas the spirit
of imitation is a faculty very commonly possessed, the
immense majority of minds accept without discussion
the ready-made ideas furnished them by opinion and
transmitted them by education.

It thus happens that by means of heredity, educa-

1 82 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES:

tion, surroundings, contagion and opinion, the men of
each age and of each race possess a sum of average
conceptions which render them singularly like one
another, alike indeed to such a degree that, when the
lapse of centuries allows us to consider them from
the proper perspective, we recognise by their artistic,
philosophical, and literary productions the epoch at
which they lived. Doubtless it could not be said that
they copied one another absolutely, but as they had
in common identical modes of feeling and thinking,
they were necessarily led to produce very kindred
work.

We must congratulate ourselves that matters are
thus arranged, for it is precisely this network of
common traditions, ideas, sentiments, beliefs, and
modes of thinking that form the soul of a people.
We have seen that the vigour of the soul of a people
is in proportion to the strength of this network. It
is this network in reality, and it alone, that keeps
nations alive, and it is impossible that it should break
up without the nations crumbling away. It consti-
tutes at once their true force and their true master.
Asiatic sovereigns are sometimes represented as kinds
of despots whose fantasy is their only guide. These
fantasies, on the contrary, have singularly narrow

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 183

limits. The network of traditions is more especially
powerful in the East. Religious traditions, so en-
feebled amongst ourselves, retain all their empire in
the East, and the most whimsical despot would never
run counter to two sovereigns he knows are infinitely
more powerful than he is : tradition and opinion.

The modern civilised man finds himself in one of
those rare critical periods of history in which the old
ideas, whence his civilisation is derived, having lost their
empire, and the new ideas not being formed as yet,
discussion is tolerated. He must go back to the '
periods of the civilisations of antiquity, or merely some
two or three centuries back, to get an idea of the
nature in those ages of the yoke of custom and
opinion, and to learn the risks run by innovators
sufficiently bold to attack these two powers. The
Greeks, whom ignorant rhetoricians affirm to have
been so free, were strictly subjected to the yoke
of opinion and custom. Each citizen had a number
of absolutely inviolable beliefs ; none would have
thought of discussing received ideas, which were
accepted without demur. The Grecian world was
unacquainted with religious liberty, with the liberty
of private life, or with liberties of any kind. The
Athenian law did not even allow the citizen to keep

184 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES:

aloof from the assemblies, or not to celebrate re-
ligiously a national fete. The alleged liberty of the
ancient world was nothing but the unconscious and,
in consequence, absolute form of the entire subjection
of the citizen to the yoke of the ideas of his city. In
the state of general war in which societies then lived,
a society whose members should have possessed
liberty of thought and action would not have lasted a
single day. The age of decadence for gods, institu-
tions, and dogmas has always begun as soon as they
have been exposed to discussion.

In modern civilisations, the old ideas which form
the basis of custom and opinion having been almost
destroyed, their empire over souls has become very
weak. They have entered on that worn-out phase
in which old ideas are in process of becoming pre-
judices. As long as they are not replaced by a new
idea, anarchy reigns in men's minds. It is only
thanks to this anarchy that discussion can be
tolerated. Writers, thinkers, and philosopher sought
to bless the present age and hasten to take advantage
of it, for they will not see its like again. It is perhaps
an age of decadence, but it is one of those rare
moments in the history of the world during which
expression of thought is free. It is impossible that

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 185

it should last. Given the present conditions of civili-
sation, the European peoples are tending towards
a social state which will tolerate neither discussion
nor liberty. The new dogmas that are about to come
into being cannot establish themselves, except on the
condition that they accept no discussions of any kind,
and that they be as intolerant as the dogmas that
have preceded them.

The man of the present day is still searching for
the ideas that shall serve as the basis of the future
social state, and therein lies the danger he runs.
What is important in the history of peoples, and
what has a far-reaching influence on their destiny,
is neither revolutions nor wars their ruins are
quickly effaced but the changes in their fundamental
ideas. They cannot be accomplished without all the
elements of a civilisation undergoing of necessity
a simultaneous transformation. The real revolutions,
the only revolutions that endanger the existence of a
people, are those which affect its thought.

It is not so much the adoption of new ideas that is
dangerous for a people, as the trying of various
ideas in succession to which it is condemned before it
finds the idea on which it will be able to build up
sufficiently solidly the new social edifice that is to

186 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES:

replace the old. It is not assuredly because an idea
is erroneous that it is dangerous the religious ideas
on which we have existed up to now were most
erroneous but it is because long repeated experi-
ments are necessary to make it certain that the new
ideas can be adapted to the needs of the societies
that adopt them. The masses unhappily can only
appreciate their degree of utility by dint of
experience. Without doubt, there is no need to be a
great psychologist or a great economist to predict
that the application of existing, socialist ideas will
lead the peoples who adopt them to a state of abject
decadence and shameful despotism ; but how are the
people it charms to be prevented from accepting
the New Gospel that is preached to them ?

History contains frequent examples of the cost of
essaying ideas that are inacceptable for an epoch, but
it is not to history that man goes for lessons.
Charlemagne endeavoured in vain to re-establish the
Roman Empire, but the idea of unity was not
realisable at the time, and his work perished with
him, as that of Napoleon was destined to perish at a
later period. Philip II. uselessly wasted his genius,
and the strength of Spain the predominant country
at the time in an effort to combat the spirit of free

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 187

inquiry which was spreading through Europe under
the name of Protestantism. This opposition to the
new idea merely resulted in reducing Spain to a state
of ruin and decadence from which it has never
recovered. In our own time, the chimerical ideas of
a crowned visionary, inspired by the incurable
international sentimentalism of his race, have brought
about the unity of Italy and Germany, and have cost
us two provinces, while endangering the peace of
Europe for a long time to come. The utterly false
idea that numbers constitute the strength of armies
has covered Europe with a sort of armed national
guard, and is leading up to its inevitable bankruptcy.
The socialist ideas with regard to labour, capital, the
transformation of private property into State property,
etc., will prove the destruction of the peoples that
permanent armies and bankruptcy shall have spared.
The principle of nationalities, formerly so dear to
statesmen that they based their entire policy on it,
may further be cited among the leading ideas, whose
dangerous influence has had to be undergone. Its
realisation has involved Europe in the most disastrous
war, has armed it from one end to the other, and will
land all modern states in succession in ruin and
anarchy. The only apparent motive that could be

i88 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES :

invoked in defence of this principle was that the
largest and most populous countries are the strongest,
and run the fewest risks. It was secretly reflected
that they were the best fitted to embark on conquest.
It is found, however, to-day, that it is precisely the
smallest and least populous countries Portugal,
Greece, Switzerland, Belgium, Sweden, the petty
Balkan principalities that have the least to fear
from their neighbours. The idea of unity has so
completely ruined Italy, formerly so prosperous, that
it is on the eve of a revolution and of bankruptcy.
The annual budgetary expenditure of all the Italian
States, which before the realisation of Italian unity
amounted to 550 millions now reaches two milliards.
It is not given, however, to men to stop the march
of ideas when they have penetrated the soul of the
masses. When they have done this, their evolution
must be accomplished, and it often happens that they
are defended by those who will be their first victims.
It is not sheep merely that docilely follow their guide
to the slaughter-house. We must bow before the
strength of an idea. When it has attained to a
certain period of its evolution, there are no longer
either arguments or demonstrations that can avail
against it. For peoples to be able to free themselves

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 189

from the yoke of an idea, either centuries or violent
revolutions are necessary ; sometimes the two.
Innumerable are the chimeras humanity has forged
for itself and of which in succession it has been the
victim.

CHAPTER II

THE ROLE OF RELIGIOUS BELIEFS IN THE
EVOLUTION OF CIVILISATIONS

Preponderating influence of religious ideas They have always
constituted the most important element of the life of peoples
Religious ideas responsible for the majority of historical events and
social and political institutions A new civilisation always comes
into existence with a new religious idea Power of the religious
ideal Its influence on character It directs all the faculties
towards the same end The political, artistic, and literary history
of peoples is the offspring of their beliefs The slightest change in
the state of a people's belief results in an entire series of
transformations in its existence Various examples.

AMONG the various ideas by which the peoples
have been guided, the ideas which are the
beacons of history, the poles of civilisation, religious
ideas have played too preponderating and too
fundamental a part for us not to devote a special
chapter to them.

Religious beliefs have always constituted the most
important element of the life of peoples, and in

consequence of their history. The most considerable

190

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES 191

historical events, those which have had the most
colossal influence, have been the birth and death of
gods. With a new religious idea a new civilisation
is born into the world. At all the ages of humanity,
in ancient times as in modern times, the fundamental
questions have always been religious questions. If
humanity could allow all its gods to die, it might be
said of such an event that, as regards its consequences,
it would be the most important event that had taken
place on the surface of our planet since the birth of
the first civilisations.

For it must not be forgotten that, since the dawn
of historical times, all political and social institutions
have been founded on religious beliefs, and that the
gods have always played the first role on the world's
stage. Apart from love, which itself is a powerful
but personal and transitory religion, it is only
religious beliefs that are capable of influencing
character in a rapid manner. The conquests of the
Arabs, the Crusades, Spain under the Inquisition,
England during the Puritan period, France with its
St. Bartholomew, and the wars of the revolution
show what becomes of a people rendered fanatic by
its chimeras. These chimeras exercise a sort of
permanent hypnotic effect which is so intense that it

IQ2 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES :

profoundly transforms the entire mental constitution.
Doubtless it is man who created the gods, but after
having created them he promptly became their slave.
They are not the offspring of fear, as Lucretius
affirms, but of hope, and for this reason their influence
will be eternal.

The gift of the gods to man, and it is a gift which
they alone have been able to endow him with up to
now, is a state of mind which allows of happiness.
No philosophy has ever been able as yet to realise
such an achievement.

The consequence, if not the aim, of all civilisations,
of all philosophies, of all religions is to engender
certain states of mind. But of these states of mind
some imply happiness, while the others do not
Happiness depends very little on exterior circum-
stances, and to a very great extent on our disposition
of spirit. The martyrs at the stake were probably
much happier than their executioners. The street-
sweeper who, devoid of care, eats his crust of bread
rubbed with garlic may be infinitely happier than the
millionaire who is a prey to manifold anxieties.

The evolution of civilisation has unhappily created
for the modern man a multitude of wants, without
giving him the means of satisfying them, and in this

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 193

way has promoted general discontent. Civilisation is
doubtless the mother of progress, but it is the
mother as well of Socialism and Anarchism, those
redoubtable expressions of the despair of the masses
that are no longer sustained by any belief. Compare
the restless, feverish European, discontented with his
lot, with the Oriental, always satisfied with his
destiny. In what do they differ, if not as regards the
state of their soul ? A people has been transformed
when its mode of conceiving and, in consequence, of
thinking and acting has been transformed.

Under penalty of being unable to last for long, the
primary duty of a society is to endeavour to find the
means of creating a state of mind which shall render
man happy. All the societies founded up to the
present have had as their basis an ideal capable of
subjugating men's souls, and they have always
disappeared as soon as this ideal has ceased to
subjugate them.

One of the great errors of modern times is the
belief that it is only in exterior things that the human
soul can find happiness. Happiness is within us,
created by ourselves, and scarcely ever outside
ourselves. After having destroyed the ideals of past
ages, we are now finding that it is not possible to

14

194 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES:

live without them, and that the secret of replacing
them must be discovered, if we would continue to
exist.

The true benefactors of humanity, those who
merit colossal statues in gold raised in their honour
by grateful peoples, are those powerful magicians, the
creators of ideals, whom humanity sometimes
produces, but whom it produces so rarely. Above
the torrent of vain appearances, standing forth the
only realities man can ever know, above the inexorable,
the glacial mechanism of the world, they have evoked
powerful and pacifying chimeras, which hide from
man the sombre sides of his destiny, and create for
him enchanted refuges of dreams and hope.

From the exclusively political standpoint, too, it is
found that the influence of religious beliefs is immense.
What makes their irresistible force is that they
constitute the only factor which can momentarily
procure a people absolute community of interests,
sentiments, and thoughts. In this way the religious
spirit replaces at one stroke the slow hereditary
accumulation necessary to form the soul of a nation,
The people that is subjugated by a belief does not
doubtless change its mental constitution, but all its
faculties are directed towards the same end the

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 195

triumph of its belief and solely in virtue of this fact
its strength becomes formidable. It is at epochs of
ardent faith that peoples, momentarily transformed,
accomplish those prodigious efforts, found those
empires which are the astonishment of history. It
was thus that a few Arab tribes, unified by the
thought of Mahomet, conquered in a few years nations
who ignored their very names, and founded their
immense empire.

It is not the quality of the beliefs that must be
taken into consideration, but the sway they exert
over men's souls. Whether the god invoked be
Moloch, or some other yet more barbarous divinity,
is of no importance. It is even well for the prestige
of the divinity that it should be wholly intolerant and
barbarous. Gods too tolerant or too mild lend their
worshippers no strength. The sectaries of the stern
Mahomet ruled for long over a great portion of the
world, and are still redoubtable ; those of pacific
Buddha have never founded anything durable, and
are already forgotten by history.

The religious spirit then has played a political
role of capital importance in the existence of peoples,
because it was always the only factor capable of
influencing their character in a short space of time.

196 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES:

The gods, no doubt, are not immortal, but the
religious spirit is eternal. It may slumber for a
while, but it awakes as soon as a new divinity is
created. A century ago it enabled France to resist
victoriously the onslaughts of all Europe up in arms.
Once more the world has had the spectacle of what
may be accomplished by the religious spirit, for it
was indeed a new religion that was founded at the
period in question, and that inspired an entire people.
The divinities that blossomed forth were, doubtless,
too fragile to last, but so long as they lasted they
exerted absolute sway.

The power of transforming souls possessed by
religions is, however, somewhat ephemeral. It is
rare for beliefs to retain for any length of time that
degree of intensity which entirely transforms char-
acter. The dream ends by growing more shadowy,
the hypnotised people awakes in a measure, and the
old substratum of character again comes to the front.

Even in cases where the beliefs are all powerful
the national character is always recognisable in the
manner in which these beliefs are adopted and in the
manifestations they provoke. What differences there
are between the same belief as found in England,
Spain, or France, Would the Reformation ever have

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 197

been possible in Spain, or would England ever have
consented to submit to the terrible yoke of the
Inquisition ? Among the peoples who have adopted
the reformed faith is it not easy to perceive the
fundamental characteristics of races which, in spite of
the hypnotising action of their beliefs, have preserved
the special features of their mental constitution : in-
dependence, energy, the habit of reasoning, and of not
obeying servilely the law of a master ?

The political, artistic, and literary history of peoples
is the offspring of their beliefs ; but these latter, while
they modify the character, are also profoundly modi-
fied by it. The character of a people and its beliefs
are the keys of its destiny. The former, as regards
its fundamental elements, is invariable, and it is pre-
cisely because it does not vary that the history of a
people always retains a certain unity. The beliefs, on
the other hand, may vary, and it is because they vary
that history records so many upheavals.

The slightest change in the state of a people's
beliefs necessarily results in an entire series of trans-
formations in its existence. We remarked in a previous
chapter that in France the men of the eighteenth
century seemed very different from those of the
seventeenth century. Doubtless, but what was the

198 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES

origin of this difference ? Solely the fact that in the
lapse of a century theology had given way to science,
reason had taken the place of tradition, and observed
truth that of revealed truth. By this simple change
of conceptions the aspect of a century is transformed,
and were we to follow its effects we should find that
our great Revolution, together with the events that
have since occurred and are still in progress, are
the mere consequence of an evolution of religious
ideas.

Moreover, if at the present day our old society
totters on its foundations and finds all its institutions
profoundly shaken, the reason is that it is losing more
and more the beliefs on which it had existed up till
now. When it shall have lost them entirely, a new
civilisation, founded on a new faith, will necessarily
take its place. History shows us that peoples do not
long survive the disappearance of their gods. The
civilisations that are born with them also die with
them. There is nothing so destructive as the dust
of dead gods.

CHAPTER III

THE ROLE OF GREAT MEN IN THE HISTORY OF
PEOPLES

The great advances made by each civilisation have always been
realised by a small elite of superior minds Nature of their role
They synthesise all the efforts of a race Examples supplied by
great discoveries Political role of great men They embody the
dominant ideal of their race Influence of the great hallucinated
Inventors of genius transform a civilisation The fanatics and
the hallucinated make history.

WHEN studying the hierarchy and the differ-
entiation of races, we saw that what most
differentiates Europeans from Orientals is that only
the former possess an elite of superior men. Let us
now endeavour to trace in a few lines the limits of the
role of this Mite.

The small phalanx of eminent men possessed by a
civilised people a phalanx it would suffice to suppress
in each generation to lower considerably the intellec-
tual level of that people constitutes the true incarna-

199

200 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES:

tion of the forces of a race. To it is due the progress
realised in the sciences, the arts, in industry, in a
word, in all the branches of civilisation.

History shows that it is to this circumscribed elite
that we owe all the advances made. Although they
profit by these advances, the masses do not like being
surpassed, and the greatest thinkers and inventors
have often been their martyrs. And yet all the
generations, all the past of a race, blossom forth in
these splendid geniuses which are the marvellous
flowers of a race. They are the true glory of a
nation, each member of which, down to the most
humble, is entitled to be proud of them. They do
not appear by chance or by a miracle, but represent
the crowning point of a long past. They synthesise
the greatness of their time and of their race. To
favour their production and development is to favour
the achievement of those advances of which humanity
will reap the benefit. If we allow ourselves to be too
much blinded by our dreams of universal equality we
shall be the first victims of our attitude. Equality
carries inferiority in its wake ; it is the dull, oppressive
dream of vulgar mediocrities. It has only been
realised in barbarous epochs. For equality to reign
in the world, it would be necessary to bring down,

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 201

little by little, whatever makes the value of a race to
the level of what is least elevated in the race.

But while the role of superior men in the develop-
ment of a civilisation is considerable, it is not, how-
ever, quite what it is generally said to be. Their
action consists, I repeat, in synthesising all the efforts
of a race ; their discoveries are always the result of a
long series of anterior discoveries ; they build an edifice
with the stones which others have slowly hewn.
Historians, who in general are very simple-minded,
have always thought it right to connect the name of
a man with each invention ; and yet, of the great
inventions which have transformed the world, such as
printing, gunpowder, steam, or the electric telegraph,
there is not one of which it can be said that it was
created by a single brain. When the genesis of dis-
coveries of this kind are studied, it is always found that
they are the outcome of a long series of preparatory
efforts : the final invention is only the crowning
stroke. Galileo's observation of the isochronism of
the oscillations of a suspended lamp paved the way
for the invention of chronometers, which were to enable
sailors to trace their route across the ocean with
certainty. Gunpowder resulted from slow trans-
formations of Grecian fire. The steam engine repre-

202 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES:

sents the sum of a series of inventions, each of which
demanded immense labour. A Greek, had he had a
hundred times as much genius as Archimedes, would
have been unable to discover the locomotive engine.
Could he have discovered it, moreover, the discovery
would have been of no use to him, as, to fabricate his
engine, he would have had to wait until mechanics
had realised advances which it took two thousand
years of efforts to achieve.

The political role of great statesmen, while it is
apparently more independent of the past, is, never-
theless, scarcely less dependent thereon than is the
role of great inventors. Blinded by the dazzling
brilliancy of the powerful leaders of men who have
transformed the political existence of peoples, such
writers as Hegel, Cousin, Carlyle, &c., have wished to
make of them demi-gods, whose unaided genius has
modified the destiny of peoples. Beyond doubt they
can affect the evolution of a society, but it is not
given to them to change its course. The genius of a
Cromwell or a Napoleon is powerless to achieve such
a task. Great conquerors can destroy towns, men,
and empires by fire and sword as a child can set fire
to a museum filled with art treasures ; but this de-
structive power must not deceive us as to the nature

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 203

of their role. The influence of great politicians is
only durable when, as in the case of Caesar or
Richelieu, they contrive to give their efforts a direc-
tion in harmony with the needs of the moment ; the
true cause of their success is generally much anterior
to themselves. Had he made the attempt two or
three centuries earlier, Caesar would not have made
the great Roman Republic accept the law of a master,
and under the same conditions Richelieu would have
been unable to realise the unity of France. In
politics the really great men are those who have a
presentiment of the needs that are about to arise, of
the events for which the past has paved the way, and
who show their fellows the direction that has got to
be taken. This direction, perhaps, was clear to
nobody, but the fatalities of evolution were soon to
engage therein the peoples whose destinies were
momentarily in the hands of these powerful geniuses.
They, too, like the great inventors, synthesise the
results of a long anterior evolution.

These analogies between the different categories of
great men must not be carried too far. The inventors
play an important part in the future evolution of a
civilisation, but no immediate role in the political his-
tory of peoples. The superior men to whom are due

204 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES:

the important discoveries, from the plough to the
telegraph, which are the common patrimony of
humanity, have never possessed the qualities of
character requisite for the founding of a religion or
the conquest of an empire, necessary, that is, to
change visibly the face of history. The thinker is
too alive to the complexity of problems ever to have
very strong convictions, and too few political ends
seem to him worthy of his efforts for him to attempt
to realise any one of them. Inventors may modify
a civilisation in the long run ; it is only fanatics, men
of narrow intelligence, but energetic character and
powerful passions, who are capable of founding
religions and empires. At the bidding of a Peter
the Hermit millions of men hurled themselves against
the East ; the words of an hallucinated enthusiast
such as Mahomet created a force capable of triumph-
ing over the old Greco-Roman world ; an obscure
monk like Luther bathed Europe in blood. The
voice of a Galileo or a Newton will never have the
least echo among the masses. The inventors of
genius hasten the march of civilisation. The fanatics
and the hallucinated create history.

For of what is history, as written in books,
composed, if not of the long narrative of man's

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 205

struggles to create an ideal, to worship it, and
then to destroy it ? And, in the eyes of science,
have such ideals more value than the vain mirages
created by the action of light on the moving sands
of the desert?

Still it is the hallucinated, the creators or propa-
gators of these mirages, who have effected the most
far-reaching transformations in the world. From the
depth of their tombs they still inflict the yoke of
their thoughts on the soul of races, and influence the
character and destiny of peoples. The importance of
their role must not be overlooked ; but, at the same
time, it must not be forgotten that the task they
accomplished was successfully accomplished because
they unconsciously embodied and expressed the ideal
of their race and their epoch. A people is only led
by those who embody its dreams. Moses represented
for the Jews the desire for deliverance over which
they had brooded during the years that they were
slaves lacerated by the whips of the Egyptians.
Buddha and Jesus were alive to the infinite miseries
of their time, and gave a religious shape to the need
for charity and pity, which, at these periods of
universal suffering, were coming into existence in the
world. Mahomet realised by means of unity of belief

206 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES

the political unity of a people divided into thousands
of rival tribes. That soldier of genius, Napoleon,
embodied the ideal of military glory, of vanity, and
of revolutionary propaganda, which at the time were
the characteristics of the people he led all over
Europe during fifteen years in pursuit of wild
adventures.

At bottom, then, it is ideas, and in consequence
those who embody and propagate them that rule the
world. Their triumph is assured when they are
defended by the hallucinated and by enthusiasts.
It is of slight importance whether they be true or
false. History ever teaches us that it is the most
chimerical ideas that have had the most fanatical
following and played the most important role. It is
in the name of the most illusory chimeras that the
world has been hitherto thrown into confusion, that
civilisations which seemed imperishable have been
destroyed, and that others have been founded. It
is not, as the Gospel assures us, the kingdom of
heaven, but of the earth, that belongs to the poor
in spirit, only provided they possess the faith that
moves mountains. Philosophers, who often have to
devote centuries to destroying what enthusiasts have
created in a day, ought to bow before those who are

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 207

capable of such feats. The enthusiasts form part of
the mysterious forces that shape the world. They
have determined the most important of the events of
which history records the course.

Doubtless they have only propagated illusions, but
it is on these illusions, at once redoubtable, seductive,
and vain, that humanity has hitherto existed, and
doubtless will continue to exist. These illusions are
mere shadows, but they must nevertheless be
respected. Thanks to them our forefathers knew
what hope was, and in their heroic and wild pursuit
of these shadows they raised us from our primitive
state of barbarism to the point we have reached to-
day. Of all the factors in the development of
civilisations, illusions are perhaps the most powerful.
It was an illusion that built up the pyramids, and
covered Egypt for five thousand years with colossal
stone monuments. It was an illusion that, in the
Middle Ages, raised our gigantic cathedrals, and
induced the Western world to dispute the possession
of a tomb with the East. It is the pursuit of illusions
that has founded the religions which exert their
sway over a half of humanity, and founded or
destroyed the vastest empires. It is not in the
pursuit of truth but in that of error that humanity

208 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES

has expended the most efforts. It could not attain
the chimerical goals it had in view ; but it was in
trying to attain them that it realised all the progress
it had no thought of achieving.

BOOK V

THE DISSOCIATION OF THE CHARACTER OF
RACES AND THEIR DECADENCE

209

BOOK V

THE DISSOCIATION OF THE CHARACTER OF RACES
AND THEIR DECADENCE

CHAPTER I

HOW CIVILISATIONS FADE AWAY AND DIE OUT

Dissolution of psychological species How hereditary dispositions
which had required centuries for their formation may be rapidly
lost A very long time is always necessary for a people to raise
itself to a high level of civilisation, and in some cases a very
short time for it to descend therefrom The principal factor in
the decadence of a people is the lowering of its character The
mechanism of the dissolution of civilisations has hitherto been
the same for all peoples Symptoms of decadence presented by
some Latin peoples Development of egoism Diminution of
initiative and will power Lowering of character and morality
The youth of the present day Probable influence of Socialism
Its dangers and its strength How it will cause the civilisations
that undergo it to return to wholly barbarous forms of evolution
The peoples among whom it will be able to triumph.

T)SYCHOLOGICAL species are not eternal any
A more than are anatomical species. The con-
ditions of environment which maintain the fixity of
their characteristics do not last for ever. If the

2J2 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES:

environment is modified, the elements of the mental
constitution which it has determined end by under-
going retrograde transformations which lead up to
their disappearance. In accordance with physio-
logical laws, as applicable to the cells of the brain
as to those of the body, and observed in all beings,
the organs take infinitely less time to disappear than
was required for their formation. Every organ that
does not fulfil its function soon ceases to be able to
fulfil it. The eyes of fish that live in the lakes of
caverns lose the power of sight after a time, and this
infirmity ends by becoming hereditary. Indeed,
even if observation be confined to the brief life of the
individual, an organ that has, perhaps, demanded
thousands of centuries for its formation by slow
adaptations and hereditary accumulations, is rapidly
stricken with atrophy when it ceases to be used.

The mental constitution of beings cannot escape
these physiological laws. The brain cell that is not
utilised ceases to fulfil its functions, and mental
dispositions it took centuries to form may be
promptly lost. Courage, initiative, energy, the spirit
of enterprise, and various qualities of character that
were a long time in being acquired disappear quickly
enough when they cease to be exercised. This fact

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 213

explains how it is that a people always requires a
very long time to raise itself to a high level of culture,
and in some cases a very short time to descend into
the abyss of decadence.

When the causes are examined that led to the
successive ruin of the various peoples with which
history is concerned, whether the people in question
be the Persians, the Romans, or any other nation,
the fundamental factor in their fall is always found
to be a change in their mental constitution resulting
from the deterioration of their character. I cannot
call to mind a single people that has disappeared in
consequence of the deterioration of its intelligence.

For all the civilisations of the past the mechanism
of dissolution has been identical, so identical, indeed,
that it may be asked with the poet, whether history,
which has so many books, has but a single page.
When a people reaches that degree of civilisation and
power at which it is assured that it is no longer
exposed to the attacks of its neighbours, it begins to
enjoy the benefits of peace and material well-being
procured by wealth. At this juncture the military
virtues decline, the excess of civilisation creates new
needs, and egoism increases. Having no ideal
beyond the hasty enjoyment of rapidly acquired

2i 4 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES:

advantages, the citizens abandon to the State the
care of public affairs, and soon lose all the qualities
that had made their greatness. Then barbarian, or
semi-barbarian neighbours, whose needs are few, but
who are strongly attached to an ideal, invade the too
civilised people, and proceed to form a new civilisation
with the debris of that which they have overthrown.
It was in this way that, in spite of the formidable
organisations of the Romans and Persians, the
barbarians destroyed the Empire of the former and
the Arabs that of the latter. It was not in the
qualities appertaining to the intelligence that the
invaded peoples were lacking. From this point of
view no comparison was possible between the con-
querors and the conquered. It was when Rome
already bore within it the germs of its approaching
decadence that it counted the greatest number of
men of culture, artists, men of letters, and men of
learning. Almost all the works that have made its
greatness date from this period of its history. But
Rome had lost that fundamental element which no
development of the intelligence can replace : character. 1

lu The evil from which Roman society was then suffering," writes
M. Fustel de Coulanges, "was not the corruption of its morals ; it was
the weakening of its will power, and, so to speak, the enervation of its
character."

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 215

The old-time Romans had very few wants and a very
strong ideal. This ideal the greatness of Rome
absolutely dominated their souls, and each citizen was
ready to sacrifice to it his family, his fortune, and his
life. When Rome had become the pole of the
universe, the richest city of the world, it was invaded
by foreigners hailing from all countries, and whom it
admitted in the end to rights of citizenship. As all
they demanded was to be allowed to enjoy the
luxury of Rome, they had but little concern for its
glory. The great city then became an immense
caravansary, but was no longer Rome. It seemed
to be still alive, but its soul had long been
dead.

Analogous causes of decadence threaten our hyper-
refined civilisations, which are menaced, however, as
well by other causes due to the evolution produced
in men's minds by modern scientific discoveries.
Science has renewed our ideas, and deprived our
religious and social conceptions of all authority.
It has shown man the trifling place he occupies in the
universe, and the utter indifference of Nature towards
him. He has perceived that what he used to term
liberty was merely ignorance of the causes of which
he is the slave, and that in view of the inexorable

216 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES:

necessities of which they are the puppets, to be
slaves is the natural condition of all living beings.
He has learned that nature ignores what we term
pity, and that all the progress it has realised
has been due to a pitiless process of selection that
involves the perpetual crushing of the weak by the
strong.

All these harsh and glacial conceptions, so contrary
to the teachings of the old beliefs that enchanted our
forefathers, have given birth to ominous conflicts in
men's souls. In vulgar brains they have engendered
that state of anarchy as regards his ideas which seems
characteristic of the modern man. In the case of the
young generation of artists and men of letters, these
same conflicts have resulted in a sort of sullen in-
difference that is fatal to the will, in an utter
incapacity to embrace any cause whatever with
enthusiasm, and in an exclusive cult of immediate
and personal interests.

Commenting upon a very just reflection of a modern
writer to the effect that the " sense of the relative
dominates contemporary thought," a Minister of
Public Instruction proclaimed with evident satis-
faction in a recent speech that "the substitution of
relative ideas for abstract notions in every field of

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 217

human knowledge is the greatest conquest of science."
The conquest declared to be new is in reality very
old. It was achieved many centuries ago by the
philosophers of India. Let us not be too ready to
congratulate ourselves that it is tending at the present
day to gain ground. The real danger to modern
societies lies precisely in the fact that men have lost
confidence in the worth of the principles that serve as
their foundations. I greatly doubt whether it would
be possible to cite in all history a single civilisation,
a single institution, a single belief that has succeeded
in holding its own by taking its stand on principles
esteemed to have only a relative value. Moreover, if
the future seems to belong to those socialist doctrines
which reason condemns, it is because they are the
only doctrines whose upholders speak in the name of
truths they declare to be absolute. The masses will
always turn towards those who speak to them of
absolute truths, and will slight all others. To be a
statesman, it is necessary to be able to penetrate the
soul of the multitude, to understand its dreams,
and to renounce philosophic abstractions. Things
in themselves change but little. It is only the ideas
that are formed of them that change greatly. It is
on these ideas that it is needful to know how to act.

218 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES:

Doubtless our knowledge of the real world is
limited to appearances, to mere states of conscience
of which the value is evidently relative. But when
we adopt the social standpoint, we can say that for a
given age and a given society there are conditions of
existence, moral laws, and institutions which have an
absolute value, since the society in question could not
subsist without them. As soon as this value is called
in question, or doubt enters men's minds, the society
is condemned to an early death.

The truths just enunciated may be inculcated
without fear, for they are among those which no
science can contest. Contrary language can only
bring about the most disastrous consequences. The
philosophic Nihilism, propagated at the present day
by authorised voices among weak minds, induces
them to believe at once in the absolute injustice of
our social system and in the absurdity of all
monarchies, inspires them with a hatred of all that
exists, and leads them directly to socialism and
anarchism. Modern statesmen are too persuaded
of the influence of institutions and too little of the
influence of ideas. And yet science shows them that
the former are always the offspring of the latter, and
have never been able to subsist without leaning on

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 219

them as a foundation. Ideas represent the invisible
springs of things. When they have disappeared
the underlying supports of constitutions and civilisa-
tions are destroyed. It was always a redoubtable
moment for a people when its old ideas descended
into the sombre necropolis where the dead gods
repose.

Going on from the causes to study the effects, it
has to be admitted that visible decadence seriously
threatens the vitality of the majority of the great
European nations, and especially of those known as
the Latin nations, and really Latin nations, if not as
regards their blood, at least as regards their traditions
and education. Every day they are losing their
initiative, their energy, their will, and their capacity
to act. The satisfaction of perpetually growing
material wants tends to become their sole ideal.
The family is breaking up, the social springs are
strained. Discontent and unrest are spreading to
all classes, from the richest to the poorest. Like the
ship that has lost its compass, and strays as chance
and the winds direct, the modern man wanders at
haphazard through the spaces formerly peopled by
the gods and rendered a desert by science. He has
lost his faith, and with it his hopes. The masses,

220 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES:

grown excessively impressionable and changeable,
and no longer kept in check by any barrier, seem
fated to oscillate without intermission between the
wildest anarchy and the most oppressive despotism.
Words will turn their heads, but their divinities of a
day are soon their victims. In appearance they seem
ardently to desire liberty; in reality they will have
none of it, and they are incessantly appealing to the
State to forge them chains. They yield blind obedi-
ence to the obscurest sectaries, to the most narrow-
minded despots. The rhetoricians who imagine they
lead the masses, but who most often follow them,
confound the impatience and nervousness that find
vent in an incessant desire for a change of master
with the true spirit of independence that girds against
any master whatever. The State, whatever be the
nominal regime, is the divinity towards which all
parties turn. It is the State that is appealed to for
regulations and protection, every day more oppres-
sive, that surround the most trivial acts of existence
with the most Byzantine and tyrannical formalities.
The younger generations are more and more disposed
to renounce careers demanding judgment, initiative,
energy, personal efforts, and will. The slightest
reponsibility alarms them. They are content with

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 221

the mediocre prospects offered them by State-paid
employment. The commercial classes ignore the
colonies, which are solely peopled by functionaries. 1
Energy and action have been replaced among states-
men by terribly empty personal discussions, in the
case of the masses by passing enthusiasms or hatreds,
in the case of men of letters by a sort of tearful,
vague, and unfruitful sentimentalism, and by colour-
less dissertations on the miseries of existence. A
boundless egoism is developing on all sides. The
individual is coming to be solely preoccupied with
himself. Consciences are capitulating, and morality

1 In a speech pronounced in the Chamber 01 Deputies on November
27, 1890, by M. Etienne, at the time Under Secretary for the Colonies,
I note the following very characteristic passage, which I borrow from
the newspaper Le Siecle :

" Cochin China has 1,800,000 inhabitants ; of this number 1,600 are
Frenchmen, 1,200 of whom are functionaries. The country is adminis-
tered by a colonial council elected by these 1,200 functionaries. It has
a Deputy. And you are surprised that anarchy reigns in the country !
(Exclamations and laughter on a great number of benches. )

"... Are you aware what is the outcome of such a system? Its
outcome is this phenomenon, that nine millions out of a budget reduced
to twenty-two millions is absorbed by the expenses in connection with
the functionaries.

"Yes, in 1877, I tried to reduce the number of functionaries. I
reduced the expenses by 3,500,000 francs out of a total of nine
millions. I took this measure in the month of October. In De-
cember the Cabinet of which I was a member was overthrown,
and in the following March the functionaries I had suppressed were
reinstated."

222 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES:

is deteriorating and gradually dying out. 1 The
individual is losing all empire over himself. He
can no longer govern himself, and the man who
cannot govern himself must inevitably come before
long to be governed by others.

1 This lowering of morality is serious when observed in professions
such as the magistracy and the profession of notary, in which honesty
used to be as general as courage among soldiers. As regards the
notaries morality has at present descended to a very low level. The
official statisticians affirm "that among notaries there is a proportion of
43 accused persons out of 10,000 individuals, whereas the average for
the whole population of France is one accused person for the same
number of individuals." In a report addressed to the President of the
Republic by the Minister of Justice and published in the Journal Officiel,
January 31, 1890, I find the following passage : "The disasters which
as early as 1840 had begun to inspire the public with uneasiness
increased progressively to such a degree that in 1876 one of my
predecessors had to call the special attention of the magistrates to the
situation of the notaries. The dismissal of notaries and notarial
catastrophes were occurring with unaccustomed frequency and under
circumstances of great gravity. The number of disasters rose succes-
sively from 31 in 1882 to 41 in 1883, to 54 in 1884, to 71 in 1886, and
the total embezzlements committed by notaries amounted to 62,000,000
francs for the period between 1880 and 1886. Finally, in 1889, 103
notaries were dismissed or obliged to give up their practice." If we con-
nect with these facts the successive ruin of our most important financial
enterprises (the Comtoir d'Escompte, the Depots et Comptes Courants,
Panama, etc.), it can only be admitted that the invectives of the
Socialists against the morality of the leading classes are not without
foundation. The same symptoms of demoralisation are unfortunately
to be observed among all the Latin peoples. The scandal of the
Italian State banks, in which robbery was practised on an immense
scale by politicians of the foremost rank, the bankruptcy of Portugal,
the wretched financial situation of Spain and Italy, the profound
decadence of the Latin republics of America, prove that the character
and morality of certain peoples have sustained incurable injury, and
that their role in the world is nearly at an end.

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 223

To change all this would be a hard task. It would
be necessary to change first of all our lamentable
Latin education. It is fatal to any initiative and
energy that heredity may have spared. It extin-
guishes every gleam of intellectual independence by
giving young people as their sole ideal hateful
examinations, which, as they only demand efforts of
the memory, place in the front rank of our professions
intelligences whose servile aptitude for imitation is the
negation of all individuality and all personal efforts.
" I try to pour iron into the soul of my pupils," said
an English schoolmaster to Guizot, when he was
visiting the schools of Great Britain. Where among
the Latin nations are the schoolmasters or the pro-
grammes capable of realising such an ambition ?
The military regime will perhaps realise it. In any
case it is the sole educator that is capable of realising
it. One of the principal conditions of improvement
for decadent peoples is the organisation of a very
severe universal military service and the permanent
menace of disastrous wars.

It is to this general lowering of character, to the
powerlessness of the citizens to govern themselves
and to this egoistic indifference, that is more espe-
cially due the difficulty experienced by the majority

224 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES:

of the Latin peoples in living under liberal laws as
far removed from despotism as from anarchy. It is
easily understandable that such laws should be little
to the liking of the masses, for Caesarism holds out to
them the promise if not of liberty, on which they do
not set much store, at any rate of a very considerable
measure of equality in servitude. On the other hand,
it would be incomprehensible that republican insti-
tutions should encounter most opposition from the
enlightened classes, but for the necessity of taking
into account the weight of ancestral influences. Is it
not with such institutions that all forms of superiority,
and intellectual superiority in particular, have most
chance of being able to display themselves ? It might
even be said that the only real objection to such
institutions, from the point of view of those who
stand out for equality at any price, is the fact that
they favour the formation of powerful intellectual
aristocracies. The most oppressive of regimes, on
the contrary, both for character and for the intelli-
gence, is Caesarism in its various forms. All that
can be said for it is that it facilitates equality in
degradation and humility in servitude. It is well
adapted to the inferior minds of decadent peoples,
and that is why they always revert to it as soon as

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 225

they are able. The plume of the first general that
comes along will be made the excuse for its adoption.
When a people has reached this pass its hour has
struck, its destiny is accomplished.

At the present hour this old-time Caesarism, which
history has always seen appear at the earliest dawn
of civilisations and at their extreme decadence, is
undergoing a manifest evolution. To-day we are wit-
nessing its resurrection under the name of Socialism.
This new expression of State absolutism will as-
suredly be the most grievous form of Caesarism,
because, being impersonal, it will escape all the
motives of fear that keep the worst tyrants under
restraint.

Socialism appears to-day to be the gravest of the
dangers that threaten the European peoples. It will
doubtless complete a decadence for which many
causes are paving the way, and it will perhaps mark
the end of Western civilisation.

To appreciate its dangers and its strength, it is not
the teachings it spreads abroad that must be con-
sidered, but the devotion it inspires. Socialism will
soon constitute the new faith of the suffering masses
whose existence is often and inevitably rendered far

from enviable by the economic conditions of con-

16

226 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES:

temporary civilisation. It will be the new religion
that will people the empty heavens. For all the
human creatures who cannot support misery un-
relieved by illusion this religion will replace the
luminous paradise of which the painted windows of
the churches spoke to them in the past. This great
religious entity of to-morrow sees the crowd of its
faithful increase every day. It will soon have its
martyrs, and it will then become one of those
religious creeds which stir up peoples, and whose
power over souls is absolute.

That the dogmas of Socialism lead to a regime
of degrading slavery which will destroy all initiative
and all independence in the souls bowed beneath its
empire is doubtless evident, but only for psycholo-
gists acquainted with the condition of man's existence.
Such foresight is beyond the reach of the masses.
They require arguments of a different order to per-
suade them, and these arguments have never been
furnished by reason.

That the new dogmas we see coming into being
are contrary to the most elementary good sense is
also evident. But were not the religious dogmas that
have guided men during so many centuries also
contrary to good sense, and has the fact hindered

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 227

them from subjecting the most luminous geniuses
to their laws ? In the matter of his beliefs man only
hearkens to the unconscious voice of his sentiments.
They form an obscure domain" from which reason has
always been excluded.

In consequence and by the mere fact of the mental
constitution created them by a long past, the peoples
of Europe will be obliged to undergo the redoubtable
phase of Socialism. It will be the signal for their
entry on one of the last stages of decadence. By
causing civilisation to revert to wholly inferior forms
of evolution, it will facilitate the destructive invasions
by which we are threatened.

Outside Russia, whose population from the psycho-
logical point of view is much more Asiatic than
European, the English would seem to be almost
the only race in Europe possessing sufficient energy,
stable enough beliefs, and a sufficiently independent
character to avoid succumbing to the new religion
the birth of which we are witnessing. Modern
Germany, in spite of deceptive appearances of
prosperity, will doubtless be its first victim, judging
from the success of the various sects that abound
within its frontiers. The Socialism that will prove
its ruin will doubtless be couched in strictly scientific

228 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES :

formulae, of value at the best for an ideal society such
as humanity will never produce, but this latest child of
pure reason will be more intolerant and more redoubt-
able than all its elders. No people is so well prepared
as Germany to accept its yoke. No people of the
present age has more entirely lost its initiative, its
independence, and the habit of self-government. 1

As to Russia, it has evolved too recently from the
regime of the "mir," that is to say, from primitive
Communism, the most perfect form of Socialism, to
return to this inferior stage of evolution. It has other
destinies. It is doubtless Russia that will one day
furnish the irresistible flood of barbarians destined to
destroy the old civilisations of the West, whose end
will have been led up to by economic struggles and
Socialism.

This hour, however, has not struck as yet. To

1 The most eminent German writers are perfectly agreed on this
point. In his recent book on the Social Question, Herr T. Ziegler,
professor at the University of Strasbourg, expresses himself as follows :

"While 'Self-help' is the dominant tendency in England, recourse
to the State is the characteristic of Germany. We are a people that
for centuries has been accustomed to be under a guardian. Moreover,
during the last twenty years, the strong arm of Bismarck, by assuring
us security, has caused us to lose the sentiment of responsibility and
initiative. It is for this reason that in difficult and even in easy cases
we appeal for the aid and protection of the State, and abandon ourselves
to its initiative."

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 229

reach it we have still to traverse certain phases.
Socialism will be too oppressive a regime to last. It
will make people regret the age of Tiberius and
Caligula and will bring back that age. One some-
times asks how the Romans of the time of the
emperors so easily supported the wild ferocity of
certain despots. The reason is that they too had
traversed social struggles, civil wars, and proscriptions,
and the experience had cost them their character.
They had come to consider these tyrants as the
ultimate instruments of their salvation. They put
up with everything from them, because they did not
know how to replace them. The truth is they cannot
be replaced. After them came the final catastrophe
brought about by the barbarians. History always
turns in the same circle.

CHAPTER II

GENERAL CONCLUSIONS

\ ^ TE have already remarked, in the Introduction
** to this work, that it was merely a short
summary, a sort of synthesis of the volumes we have
devoted to the history of civilisations. Each of the
chapters composing it should be regarded as the con-
clusion arrived at by anterior investigations. It is
very difficult in consequence to still further condense
ideas so condensed already. I shall attempt, how-
ever, for the benefit of readers whose time is precious,
to present in the guise of very brief propositions the
fundamental principles which represent the philosophy
of this work.

A race possesses psychological characteristics
almost as fixed as its physical characteristics. Like

the anatomic species, the psychological species is

230

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES 231

only transformed as the result of the accumulations
of ages.

To the fixed and hereditary psychological
characteristics, whose association forms the mental
constitution of a race, are adjoined, as in the case
of all anatomic species, accessory elements created
by diverse modifications of the environment. Being
incessantly renewed they endow a race with a certain
measure of apparent variability.

The mental constitution of a race represents not
only the synthesis of the living beings which compose
it, but more particularly that of all the ancestors who
have contributed to its formation. It is not the
living but the dead who play the preponderating role
in the existence of a people. They are the creators
of its morality and the unconscious sources of its
conduct.

The very great anatomic differences which dis-
tinguish the various human races are accompanied by
not less considerable psychological differences. When
only the average representatives of each race are com-
pared, the mental differences often appear somewhat
slight. They become immense as soon as the com-
parison is instituted between the most elevated
elements of each race. It is then found that what

232 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES:

more especially differentiates superior from inferior
races is the fact that the former possess a certain
number of highly developed minds, whereas the latter
possess no such minds.

The individuals of which inferior races are com-
posed display a manifest equality between one
another. In proportion as races rise in the scale
of civilisation, their members tend to become more
and more differentiated. The inevitable effect of
civilisation is to differentiate individuals and races.
In consequence peoples are not progressing towards
equality but towards a growing inequality.

The life of a people and all the manifestations
of its civilisation are merely the reflection of its soul,
the visible signs of something invisible but very
real. Exterior events are only the apparent surface
of the hidden framework by which they are deter-
mined.

It is neither chance nor exterior circumstances,
and still less political institutions, that play the
fundamental role in the history of a people. It is
more especially the character of a people that
fashions its destiny.

The various elements of the civilisation of a
people being only the outward signs of its mental

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 233

constitution, the expression of certain modes of
feeling and thinking peculiar to a people, these
elements cannot be transmitted unchanged to peoples
of a different mental constitution : all that can be
transmitted is the exterior, superficial, and unimpor-
tant forms.

The profound differences existing between the
mental constitutions of the various peoples result in
these peoples viewing the world in very dissimilar
lights. The consequence is that they feel, reason
and act in very different ways, and they therefore
find, when they come in contact, that they are in
disagreement on all questions. Most of the wars that
take up so large a portion of history are the outcome
of these dissentiments. Wars of conquest, wars of
religion, wars of dynasties, have always in reality
been wars of races.

An agglomeration of men of different origin do
not form a race, do not possess, that is, a collective
soul, until, as the result of interbreeding continued
during centuries, and of a similar existence under
identical conditions, the agglomeration has acquired
common sentiments, common interests, and common
beliefs.

Among civilised peoples there are scarcely any

234 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES:

natural races, but only artificial races created by
historical conditions.

Changes of environment only influence pro-
foundly new races, that is, mixtures of old races
whose ancestral characteristics have become dis-
sociated by cross breeding. Heredity is the only
force powerful enough to struggle against heredity.
Changes of environment have only a destructive
action on races the fixity of whose characteristics has
not been affected by cross breeding. An ancient
race perishes rather than undergo the transformations
requisite to enable it to adapt itself to a new
environment.

The acquisition of a solidly constituted collective
soul marks the apogee of the greatness of a people.
The dissociation of this soul always marks the hour
of its decadence. The intervention of foreign ele-
ments constitutes one of the surest means of this
dissociation being compassed.

Like anatomic species, psychological species are
subject to the action of time. They too are fated to
grow old and die out. Always very slow in being
ormed, it is possible for them on the contrary to dis-
appear rapidly. It suffices to trouble profoundly the
functioning of their organs to cause them to under-

ITS INFLUENCE ON THEIR EVOLUTION 235

go retrograde transformations whose consequence is
often their prompt destruction. Peoples are centuries
long in acquiring a certain mental constitution, which
they sometimes lose in a very short space of time.
The ascending path which leads them to a high level
of civilisation is always very long, while the decline
which leads them to decadence is most often very
rapid.

Together with character, ideas should be ac-
counted one of the principal factors in the evolution
of a civilisation. They do not exert an influence
until, after a very slow evolution, they have been
transformed into sentiments and have come in con-
sequence to form part of the character. They are
then unaffected by argument, and take a very long
time to disappear. Each civilisation is the outcome
of a small number of universally accepted funda-
mental ideas.

Religious ideas are among the most important
of the guiding ideas of a civilisation. The majority
of historical events have been due indirectly to the
variation of religious beliefs. The history of humanity
has always run parallel to that of its gods. Such is
the power of these children of our dreams that even
this name cannot be changed without the whole

mis

236 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES

world being thrown at once into confusion. The
birth of new gods has always marked the dawn of
a new civilisation, and their disappearance has
always marked its decline.

UNWIN BROTHERS, THE GRESHAM PRESS, WOKING AND LONDON.

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